Ghost
by CelticX
Summary: She's been stuck in the same place for forty-six years, forced against her will into an unending life of loneliness. Sentenced to watch the world pass by her – unseen, unheard, untouched, unloved. Can anyone lift her curse? Or will she remain alone…forever.
1. Prologue

I do not own MSGM or any of its characters. All such honors belong to Oyuki Konno. I just like to play with them ^_^

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_Prologue_

"You're still here?" the young man asked as he came walking in through the biscuit door. "I'd have thought you'd have moved on by now."

"No, I'm still here," the girl answered with a sigh from where she sat on the windowsill watching the world pass by outside the thin pane of glass. She turned her head to look at him and smiled sadly. "How about you? Just passing through or do you have a job here today?"

"Oh, just passing through," he grinned back, doing his best to hide his surprise at the girl's willingness to talk today. He hadn't even really expected her to answer his question. After all, she hadn't said more than a few words to him the last three times he'd stopped by. "Haven't had much call to make a pickup here in, oh, at least fifteen years or more. These high-class ojou-samas just don't need my services that often. Too afraid to break a nail if you ask me," he chuckled.

"So, you came just to see little old me?" the girl's smile widened just a touch although her eyes remained clouded. "I'm honored."

"D-don't be," he huffed with unfeigned indignation and crossed his arms over his chest before turning his head to the side. "You're not that important."

"You are so tsundere," the girl laughed lightly.

"I AM NOT," the boy burst out, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment as he turned to look at her. His next words were much softer and caring, essentially proving the girl's observation. "I just thought that maybe you'd decided it was time to move on."

The girl sighed and shook her head, any sign of past levity now gone. "You know it doesn't work like that," she said quietly. "No matter how much you or anyone else might hope," she said in a whisper, her voice and eyes losing all color and emotion – all hope – as she turned back to looking out the window, "not even you can help me, Hiroshi," she said in a voice so soft that he just barely heard her words even though he could normally hear a pin drop at a hundred meters.

He had thought that maybe, just for a moment there, when she'd laughed, that he'd actually seen her real smile. It had been so long since he'd even heard her chuckle or giggle. But then, she really didn't have all that much to smile about.

The girl, young woman really, had already been here for a long time when he'd first run across her while picking up a 'package' he'd been assigned to deliver to its proper destination. At the time she'd been sitting on the roof of this old house, watching the students making their way from their classes to the bus stop or train station to head home. Just the sight of the young woman sitting alone on the roof of the old place had intrigued him enough that he'd stopped by to chat.

She'd been a lot more talkative back in those days, probably because she finally had someone she could talk to he'd eventually realized. So he'd tried to stop by every few days after their initial meeting. As time continued to pass, however, she slowly became more taciturn, more depressed, more withdrawn, until he had difficulty getting even a few words out of her. The time between visits had lengthened until he now only stopped by to see her every few months. It was too painful to see her sitting here, day after day, year after year, watching life go by that she could take no part in.

"Um," he cleared his throat, but there was no reaction from the girl staring out the window. Not even the blinking of an eyelid. He doubted that she even remembered that he was still there. "I guess…I'll see you later than," he sighed, giving the girl one last glance before walking back through the door to continue on to his most recent assignment. Once he'd passed through the biscuit door he stopped and turned back to stare forlornly at the room, sadly wishing for the thousandth time that there was something he could do to help her. One of these days he at least wanted to see a real smile grace those lips again, but it seemed that today wasn't going to be that day.

Others started coming in and making their way up the narrow steps to the room he'd just vacated, their dark green uniforms with their perfect pleats and the white sailor collars and scarves tied just right. It was a newer version of the same uniform the girl he'd just left had been wearing. Some of the girls were smiling, other's giggling. None of them gave him a second or even a first glance as they passed him by. He briefly wondered if maybe one of them would be the one that could help the young woman where obviously he couldn't.

With another sigh he shook his head and moved on to complete his assigned mission for the day.

If the boy had waited in the room just a few minutes longer he might have seen a spark of life re-animate those deep brown eyes and a small smile pull those pink lips up at the corners as she gazed out the window.

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A/N: No, I haven't forgotten Foundation, I've just had this one in the works for a while and finally finished it. I hope you enjoy the story. Please leave me a note or comment and let me know what you think.


	2. Chapter 1

It had been an extremely long day for Sachiko Ogasawara and, since it was one of those extremely rare occasions when no one was around to hear her, she allowed herself the rare treat of a comfortable sigh of relief as she walked along one of the many cobblestoned paths on the grounds of Lillian Girls' Academy. Classes right after the summer break were always somewhat tedious as the teachers realized they needed to take their time regaining student interest which was still mostly focused on the fun they'd had during the break. What chance did English, History, or Mathematics have when hearts and minds were still figuratively 'on vacation?'

Unfortunately this left the one particular second-year student known for how quickly she picked up and understood the material quite frustrated and, to a large degree, in a sullen mood which was why the sight of an old two-story building with white wood siding and a gray pagoda-style roof coming into view perked up her spirits immensely.

Walking up to the front door and turning the old brass knob, she pushed it open and immediately felt better as the emotional warmth of the small building enveloped her. The feelings of peace, acceptance and welcome that flowed through her upon entering the Rose Mansion was what she had always imagined it would feel like to come home. It was unfortunate that her own home had never given her this same feeling of comfort. The Ogasawara estate greatly reflected the cold, impersonal, and business-like attitude of her father more so than the loving and caring embrace of her mother.

Only here, in this building, did she get the feeling that her presence was truly desired.

Sachiko had been coming to this old building ever since she'd been chosen by Youko Mizuno - the current Rosa Chinensis and one of the three members of the Yamayurikai, Lillian's student council - to be her petite soeur. It was Youko that had forced her to terminate the multitude of tutors her father had foisted upon her as she was growing up - those old men and women whose job it was to teach her the finer arts of being a rich and respected lady of high society - by the simple expedient of providing Sachiko with a workload of duties that did not allow time for any further tutoring. For that reason alone she would have loved the girl one year her senior. But it was Youko's caring manner, even when combined with her meddlesome attitude, which had won Sachiko's heart and made her a true sister.

As she closed the door behind her and took her first step past the threshold a slight shiver ran down the second-year's back.

_There it is again_, Sachiko thought as she made her way slowly from the front door and across the worn but gleaming hardwood floors to the bottom of the narrow set of steps. That staircase would lead her to the second floor and the meeting room where she was expecting to meet her onee-sama, Youko. Ignoring the shiver she took the steps slowly and carefully, listening to their loud, squeaky creaks.

The Rose Mansion had to be at least seventy-five years old and, despite how well it had been maintained over the years, old buildings simply had a tendency to accumulate odd sounds every now and again. She was sure that the creaking of the stair treads was simply due to aging glue and loose screws, but it still gave her a bit of the creeps every time she had to take them up to the second floor balcony.

What was creeping her out even more these days was the feeling she'd been having recently, as if someone were watching her make her way up those creaky, old, and most likely safe but still disconcerting stairs.

Sachiko stopped at the landing halfway up the staircase to once again admire the artistry and delicacy of the stained glass window that threw shards of yellow, white, and red light across the steps and the hardwood floor below. The window depicted three large rose blooms, one of each color that represented the triumvirate that ruled the student council of Lillian Girls' Academy; Rosa Foetida, Rosa Gigantea, and Rosa Chinensis, respectively.

Turning to start up the second set of stairs to the balcony she sighed again, this time with a touch of resignation, not really looking forward to her onee-sama once again reminding her that she needed to find herself a petite soeur. Just as Youko had chosen Sachiko to be her petite soeur the previous year, so too was it expected that the now second-year Sachiko would chose a first-year student to become her own little sister. It wasn't that the blue-eyed heiress didn't want to find a younger girl to love and care for just as Youko did for her. She'd just never found anyone that she could care that much about.

Her younger cousin, Touko, was currently a third-year student in Lillian's middle school division. Despite her sometimes testy personality Sachiko thought that with the correct guidance she would eventually make a very good Rosa Chinensis to follow in her footsteps. Unfortunately, six months separated her from today and the day that Touko would become a first-year high school student. Hopefully Youko-sama would allow Sachiko that additional time so that she could choose her cousin to be her petite soeur since no one else had yet to claim her heart.

She was just over half way up the steps when her foot slipped from one of the slick, timeworn risers and she felt herself falling backwards. Fear seized her as her arms started to pinwheel. Her book bag flew from her hands to crash loudly onto the landing behind her and a very unladylike shriek of terror escaped her lips. She felt herself leaning further and further backward with each swing of her arms. She couldn't even try to grab the railing to forestall her plunge to the unforgiving floor below.

She was about to topple over and tumble head first down the stairs, surely breaking any number of bones along with her neck, when a pair of small but firm hands suddenly pushed against her back, one just to the left of the small of her back and the other one just inside her right shoulder blade. Slowly but surely she found herself moving back upright until she could finally regain her equilibrium and set her feet firmly beneath her center of gravity.

The onslaught of relief she was feeling made her knees weak so she quickly grabbed onto the railing to steady herself. Closing her eyes and dropping her chin she gusted out an immense sigh of relief even while her fingers tightly gripped the stair's railing such that her knuckles were white. Based solely on the size and strength of the hands that had saved her she smiled and thanked her timely rescuer.

"Shimako-san, thank you so much. I'm afraid to think of what I might have broken if I'd actually taken a tumble down the stairs."

"Um, Sachiko-sama?" a quiet, angelic voice came from above her. The raven haired Sachiko opened her eyes and looked up to see the entire Yamayurikai standing against the railing looking down at her with various expressions of surprise and concern. Youko was closest to her with Sei-sama right next to her followed by the dark blonde haired girl that had just spoken. Next to Shimako-san was Eriko-sama and then Sachiko's dear friend Rei.

"Well, if it wasn't Shimako-san then it must have been Yosh…" Sachiko started to say until she saw a waif-like girl with long brown braids step up next to her cousin Rei.

"It wasn't me, Sachiko-sama," Yoshino said with wide eyes. "Who were you speaking to?"

Sachiko's temper was beginning to flare along with her fear and confusion. "I was thanking the girl that kept me from falling down the stairs when my foot slipped," she said in a cold, arrogant voice, her usual reaction to being so vexed. She started to turn to thank the girl, whoever it was that had saved her life, when she heard her onee-sama's confused and concerned voice.

"Sachiko…"

The raven haired girl's eyes widened in shock and she promptly fell on her rear end to plop indecorously onto a step. Through her confused and frightened mind one fact remained true.

The stairs behind her were empty.

-oo-

"I swear that there were hands pushing me back up the steps, onee-sama!" Sachiko exclaimed as she tried to take a sip from the cup of hot chamomile tea that Yoshino-chan had placed in front of her. Her hands were shaking so badly that she immediately put the cup back down again so that she didn't further embarrass herself by spilling her drink. As much as she hated to show any weakness whatsoever she found herself still too scared to keep her hands from bearing witness to her fears.

It had taken both Sei and Rei to get the swooning girl up the stairs and into a chair where she started shaking and her normally pale, porcelain skin was even whiter than usual. Unable to let those emotions show to her friends she instead ended up coming across as belligerent. Luckily those that knew her also knew that this was her way to save face.

"I was tilted so far back that there was no way I wasn't going to fall down the stairs until I felt those hands push me back upright!"

"It's not like we're saying that we don't believe you, Sachiko," the black haired Youko sighed and shook her head at her petite soeur's defensive attitude, "it's just that we can't explain it any better than you can."

"Speak for yourself, Youko," the brown haired Eriko Torii, whose light brown eyes were sparkling with excitement, said with a grin that she made no attempt to hide from the upset and peeved Sachiko. "Oh, not that I don't believe you," she said with a pointed look at the blue-eyed girl until she settled back in her chair with a scowl, "it's just that it must have been Azumi-chan!" she clapped her hands in delight. When all she received from those sitting around the table in the Rose Mansion's meeting room were confused looks the usually ever-bored Eriko gasped in surprise. "You can't tell me you've never heard of Azumi-chan! She's one of Lillian's seven mysteries!"

"You've lost me, Eriko," Sei grinned and shook her head. "I didn't even know Lillian _had_ any mysteries; except for me of course," the blonde laughed.

"Your lechery isn't a mystery in the least, you dirty old man," the brown haired Rosa Foetida laughed. "Oh, come on," Eriko gasped again at her friend's lack of knowledge regarding their beloved school's history. "How can you not know of the seven mysteries of Lillian? Such as why, when all of the other classes – such as Pine class, or Chrysanthemum class – have three classes, one for each year, yet there is only one second-year Sakura class and first and third-year Plum classes. Or why the Sakura classroom is the only one to have a cherry wood door. Or about the anatomy model that moves around on its own at night looking for the rest of its body. Or the singing that comes from the music room when no one is there. Or about the supposed door to another world amidst the cherry blossoms. Or about Azumi-chan who supposedly haunts the Rose Mansion."

"I have to admit," Youko said thoughtfully but with a hint of excitement growing in her own eyes, "I'd heard of the things surrounding the Sakura class as well as a couple of the others, but I'd never heard of Azumi-chan or any other ghost haunting this old place."

"Is Azumi really her name?" Yoshino asked with a cold air of disdain. "I mean, I'm not going to necessarily believe all this stuff about a ghost, but _really_, this ghost's name just happens to mean 'safe residence?' I'm sorry but I don't buy it. It's too pat."

"Well, you're right there, Yoshino-chan," Eriko grinned, proud at how astute her granddaughter could sometimes be. "Azumi-chan was the name my own onee-sama told me, but she said that no one knows what the ghost's real name is. I've heard differing stories about her past – like she was a first-year student that committed suicide because no one chose her to be their petite soeur, or that she was actually a bouton that fell from the roof of the Rose Mansion and died while hanging a banner – but no one really knows the truth of the tale or what the girl's real name was."

"Wait," Sachiko sputtered into the brief pause, "you're talking as if this ghost is real! That whoever it was that saved me really was a g-ghost!" she stammered as fear once again claimed her. She pushed it down as far as it would go, but her voice still trembled slightly as she asked, "How can you even entertain such wild ideas?" She couldn't discount the fact that _something_ had saved her, but a ghost! A real, live, ghost! It was impossible…wasn't it? Just the thought had her shivering again.

"Well, Sachan," Sei smirked at the younger girl that was usually the butt of her pranks and teasing, "how else would you explain the fact that you were saved? How else would you explain the feeling of hands on your back when obviously there was no one behind you on the staircase? Or have you somehow suddenly turned into a majou shoujo, a 'magical girl' that can fly?" the older girl chuckled at her own wit.

"I think," Youko said quickly before her furious petite soeur lost all patience and exploded, "that we can all agree that something, or someone, came to Sachiko's rescue. Whether that assistance was a supernatural occurrence or something else, we are extremely lucky that my petite soeur is whole and uninjured. The result is the most important thing. Not the how."

"Or why," Sei chuckled again only to earn herself a stout kick to the shin by way of Youko's small foot.

"If you're really interested in the tale, Sachiko-chan," Eriko teased the younger woman, "you can do what I did after my onee-sama told me about Azumi-chan. There are books in the school library that contain all of the folklore and various tales of mystery and imagination throughout Lillian's history. I only went back about forty years before I got bored of the whole thing. Maybe you'll do better? Hmm?" she grinned.

Sachiko wouldn't countenance that suggestion with an actual reply. The last thing she wanted to do was to give in to Eriko-sama's teasing. The raven haired girl had absolutely no interest in furthering her education regarding Azumi-chan or any other Lillian ghost.

"Unless you're too scared," Eriko smirked.

"Yeah," Sei agreed with a wide grin, knowing exactly where Eriko was going. "You know Sachan, fear can be an awfully difficult foe to beat." Everyone in the Yamayurikai knew that if Sachiko had one Achilles Heel it was her hatred of losing. And losing to something like fear, being called a coward, was something she simply would not allow.

"Fine!" the younger woman declared, taking the bait. "I'll look up those old stories. It certainly won't take away from my studies this time of year. Not only that, but I'll prove to you that there's no such thing as a Rose Mansion ghost!" The only response she got from her two sempai was a pair of chuckles.

"As much as I'd like to continue this discussion," Youko said as she pulled on her mantle as Rosa Chinensis in an attempt to save her petite soeur from even further embarrassment and teasing, "we have work that needs to be completed before we leave today. I suggest we get to it."

Mumbles of "spoil-sport" and "party-pooper" could be heard coming softly from her year-mates, but she gave it no mind.

The rest of the Roses and boutons reluctantly got down to the business of the day, but Sachiko wasn't listening. She was still imagining, and shivering at, the feel of ghostly hands upon her body. Those hands had been small, but they'd also been firm and strong. And they'd been warm! Surely ghosts didn't have any warmth in them being the simple specters that they were.

But not only that, despite her fear at the time she'd been sure that she'd felt a moment of safety within the grasp of those hands. Of course there was the fact that the hands had been in the process of saving her, but it had been even more than that. When her eyes had been closed and she'd finally been able to calm herself while standing there on those steps, she'd felt such a warmth and safety that she'd never before imagined. If walking into the Rose Mansion felt like coming home, those hands had felt like what she romantically imagined to be the tender and caring embrace of a friend or lover.

She was actually somewhat surprised that all of this talk of ghosts hadn't completely frightened her to death, but for some reason she just couldn't imagine the owner of those hands, even if it was a ghost, being anything but loving. She found herself glancing around the room as if trying, hoping, to see some spectral image standing in a corner smiling at her only to be disappointed when no mist-like image of a young girl appeared.

When the meeting was finally over everyone gathered up their belongings and started the process of heading to their own homes. As she reached the top of the steps, with Youko and Eriko in front of her and everyone else behind, she couldn't help but stop and glance around the large, bright, airy foyer.

"Hey, Azumi-chan," Sei called out behind her in a laughing voice, "thanks for saving Sachan's keister. She'd have been lost without you." Although everyone seemed to be smiling at the older girl's witticism, only Sachiko had a burning desire to bow her head in thanks to her savior; ghost or not. Everything was still for a moment, as if they were all holding their breaths awaiting an answer.

The ancient crystal chandelier above the foyer flickered, never quite going out. It was only for a moment, but for some reason Sachiko got the impression that the chandelier was…giggling? Once again she got the feeling of being watched, but it wasn't coming from the area around the chandelier. She also felt the embrace of that same warmth and caring she'd felt earlier. On a notion she turned to face the area just above the stained glass window and bowed from the waist.

"Thank you," she said solemnly into the empty air. Again, it was as if everyone was waiting for something.

The lights of the chandelier dimmed for almost a full two seconds before they came blazing back to their normal brightness and then remained steady, without a single flicker.

"I-it's just a brownout," Youko stammered softly. "It happens all the time during the summer months. Right?" she asked everyone with a nervous giggle, seeming to be begging for the others to agree with her.

"Right you are," Eriko nodded succinctly, but then grinned. "Although I must admit, I find this all quite fascinating."

"Oh dear God," Yoshino squeaked fearfully.

Sachiko wondered what her young friend found so frightening…the thought that there might really be a ghost…or Eriko finding something 'fascinating?'


	3. Chapter 2

The next afternoon found Sachiko ensconced in a carrel in the Lillian Library's reading room surrounded by small, thin books purported to contain at least part of the folklore and legends of Lillian Girls' Academy. Since there were no meetings that day she was able to go straight to the library from her last class. She'd spent the first ten minutes wandering the shelves trying to find the proper section before giving up and asking one of the girls from the library club to assist her in her search. At first she'd been embarrassed about asking for them, but then she realized that there was no way the student aiding her could know of the true reason as to why she would want to read the stories contained in the, she now found, mostly hand written books.

All of the books were hand bound in all assortments of materials, from leather to plastic and even a three-ring binder. The vast majority of the pages were filled with mostly scrawling script on school ruled paper although there were a few hand-drawn pictures here and there. And while most of the kanji were neat and easily legible there were some that looked like the work of a drunken sailor near the end of a three-day binge. Similarly, the stories contained in the multitude of books ran the full gamut from childishly amateurish to the equivalent of publishable works of art. There were six books, one for each class, for almost every year since the school's founding near the end of the Meiji Period. It appeared that only in the last few years had the number of books trailed off until it appeared that the only class still writing the stories was the Sakura class.

"If Rosa Foetida read forty years-worth of these, that would be upward of two hundred and forty books with who knows how many stories in each," Sachiko said softly, suddenly impressed at Eriko-sama's stamina and determination in getting through even that many books just to try to learn more about a ghost that almost no one knew about and even fewer believed in.

"All right," she sighed to herself, "if I assume that Eriko-sama would have told me if there was anything in those first forty years of stories, and yes, I know how bad it is to assume even that much, then I can probably start there and work my way backwards." At the end she eventually decided to start with the last year of the Showa period (1926 – 1989) and work backwards from that point. She'd be covering many of the same years that the current Rosa Foetida had gone over herself, but it gave Sachiko some small peace of mind to think that she'd just be double checking her sempai's earlier efforts.

Given their handmade nature, the books couldn't be checked out overnight, and there were still days when she had to do either Yamayurikai work or, less often but even more importantly, work for her father. Eventually even school work that had to be done, so it was impossible for her to go through over eighty years of stories in one day or even one week.

After a few days spent mostly in thought or looking around the room to see if she could discern some ghostly presence, Sachiko returned to providing her full input into the council meetings and taking on her fair share of the workload. She was surprised that Sei-sama hadn't teased her any more than she had. It appeared that everyone had come to the conclusion that she needed time to work through what had happened to her that odd day when she'd nearly fallen down the stairs only to be saved by…something.

The one thing that didn't seem to change at all, or two things really, were the feelings of welcome she received every time she walked into the Rose Mansion and her continuing belief that someone was watching her the entire time she was there. However, as that feeling of being watched continued she realized that she was no longer thinking of it as being creepy. Instead it almost felt as if she had someone that loved her watching over her. It was not a feeling with which she was overly experienced, and she admitted to herself that it could just be her own imagination, but still, that feeling of welcome and guardianship felt…nice.

The raven haired bouton was three weeks into her research project into Azumi-chan when it occurred to her that the _Lillian Kawaraban_, the school's newspaper and gossip rag, had also been established near the beginning of the school's founding and that the back issues, if they were to be had, might have articles on The Rose Mansion Ghost. In three weeks of work consisting of reading more than thirty years-worth of stories she'd been able to find exactly three stories that seemed to revolve around or contain references to Azumi-chan. At least she assumed that all three were speaking of the same specter. A 1982 story had mentioned, almost as a side note to the main story, a benevolent presence that could be felt when entering the Rose Mansion. Then there was a 1973 story that actually mentioned Azumi-chan by name with regards to the spectral image of a girl with brown hair and pigtails seen sitting in the meeting room window by a girl walking past the old building. The girl in the window was said to have been wearing an older style of the Lillian uniform and simply staring out into space. The girl walking past the Rose Mansion hadn't been frightened, only curious and so had stopped to linger a bit and watch, but the figure had slowly faded away. Not even the curtains had moved at her departure.

The third story was from 1968 and had been penned by that year's Rosa Gigantea en Bouton. It seemed that the Yamayurikai had been holding their annual Christmas party in the meeting room on the mansion's second floor…

-oo-

_It was getting a little late in the evening, and it appeared from everyone's overly giddy behavior that my onee-sama had most likely spiked the punch with a liberal amount of alcohol, when I noticed a young girl not then a member of the Yamayurikai standing off by herself in a corner watching everything going on with a somewhat melancholy smile on her face. Assuming that she was a friend of one of the council members or of their petite soeurs, I went over to the small side table where the punch bowl and a couple of cups were sitting and ladled out a fresh cup. I then slowly wandered over to where the girl was standing and lazily leaned against the wall next to her. I then held out the cup, offering it to the small but cute girl. The girl seemed to ignore the offer for a moment, not even looking at the cup, so I decided to speak up._

"_Would you care for some punch?" I asked politely and with a smile on my lips. "I would recommend sipping it very slowly though. Vodka doesn't tend to show up in the taste, but I'm pretty sure you'd feel it if you were to try drinking it too quickly," I grinned at the young girl. _

_The girl's eyes widened with what seemed to be shock at even being approached, almost as if she hadn't been expecting to be noticed by anyone in the room, but she quickly schooled her features and, after seeming to look longingly at the cup, silently rejected my offer with a gentle smile and a very slight, almost non-existent push against the hand holding the offered cup. I remember shrugging my shoulders and, with a small and somewhat cheeky salute, downed the drink in three large gulps to the once again widened eyes of the girl. I couldn't help but laugh a little at her reaction._

"_I've had to learn how to hold my alcohol with the way my onee-sama drinks," I giggled with a nod at the older girl in question who was at the time loudly regaling the Rosa Chinensis with one story or another. The girl by my side had seemed to sigh with a touch of relief, "besides, it is a party," I beamed at her. "Got to have fun while you can." The silent girl smiled that wistful smile again and nodded her head in understanding,_

_We spoke for a few more minutes – at least I spoke while the other girl seemed happy to reply with nods or shakes of the head – until I decided that I needed to refresh my drink. I once again offered to get my silent companion a cup, but again she shook her head and a smile told me that she was fine as she was._

_So I wandered over to the punch bowl, which happened to have a small mirror hanging on the wall above it, when my onee-sama came up to join me._

"_Are you enjoying yourself my sweet?" she asked me with her usual disarming grin. "What were you doing just standing by yourself in the corner?"_

"_I was speaking with one of our guests, onee-sama," I replied forthrightly with a nod of my head in the direction of where I'd been standing and talking with the other girl. "She doesn't say much, but she seems nice enough."_

"_Um, I hate to ask this," my onee-sama said softly as she gently pried the refreshed cup of spiked punch from my hand, "but what girl? You seemed to be talking to yourself. I was getting worried that maybe I'd added too much vodka to the punch."_

"_Onee-sama," I remember whining cutely, something that my grande soeur always seemed to think was adorable, glancing first at my seemingly confused grande soeur and then up at the mirror in front of me, "I was speaking with…"_

_And as I watched the room behind me in the mirror, the girl standing in the corner, the one that I'd been speaking with for at least the past fifteen minutes or so, smiled at me, nodded what appeared to be a heartfelt thanks, and then seemed to slowly fade away._

"_Um, maybe I have had too much to drink," I said shakily after a moment of sheer surprise and wonder at what I'd just seen. I turned around to make absolutely sure of what my eyes were telling me to find that the girl I'd been speaking with had indeed disappeared without a trace._

"_Or maybe," my onee-sama said gently, placing a soft hand on my now trembling shoulder, "the girl you were speaking with had brown hair done up in pigtails? And brown eyes?" she said as I nodded my affirmation in shock at what I was hearing. "And was wearing last year's uniform?"_

"_Now that you mention it, I did think that it was odd that she was wearing the old style uniform," I squeaked._

"_Ah, so Azumi-chan was here," my onee-sama grinned knowingly. "I hope she had a good time. You were polite?"_

"_O-of course, onee-sama!" I said a touch petulantly. "I'm always polite. You don't have to remind me of things like that."_

"_Good. Good," my grande soeur grinned again, patting me lovingly on the shoulder, "we must always treat others with kindness and respect, and those that truly care for us with even greater love." I tried to ask her what she meant by that, but onee-sama didn't say another word on the subject the rest of the night, much to my own chagrin and frustration._

_I spent the remainder of the evening enjoying the last day before the winter break with my onee-sama and friends, but couldn't help glancing every so often over at the corner where I'd shared a few nice moments with a very sweet young girl. As I and the rest of the petite soeurs finished cleaning the room after the party was over, and just as I was leaving and closing the door behind me, I couldn't help but stop and look back into the room one more time and at one corner in particular._

"_Merry Christmas, Azumi-chan," I whispered with a smile before softly closing the door behind me and heading off for the holidays._

-oo-

There were no other stories that mentioned the Rose Mansion Ghost prior to that one, at least not as far back as 1959 which is where Sachiko decided to stop for the evening.

"Maybe Tsutako-san can help me find the back issues of the _Kawaraban_," Sachiko told herself softly as she began putting the books she'd appropriated back into their proper places on the shelves. "She may not be a member of the Newspaper Club, but I'd much rather deal with her than with Minako-san or Mami-san." She shuddered at the thought of having to speak with either of those two girls. She could just see the bold print headlines. "Rosa Chinensis en Bouton Searches for Rose Mansion Ghost!" or "Rosa Chinensis en Bouton Believes in Ghosts!" or "A 'Spectral' Love for Rosa Chinensis en Bouton!" Something of that nature would surely be the best of what she could expect from those two if she had to go to them for assistance.

Tsutako-san, on the other hand, asked no questions beyond what was necessary to help her in her enquiries.

"Unfortunately the school hasn't made an effort to scan the back issues into a computer yet," the brown haired photographer said as he led Sachiko to a back, rarely used corner of the library, "but there is a card index of sorts that one of the previous _Kawaraban_ editors had put together. You can use it to search for particular subjects or people that will keep you from having to read every single edition of the newspaper," she apologized to her older and much more elegant senpai. "Did you have a particular person or topic that you were looking for?" she asked with a raised eyebrow and a spark of interest in her dark blue eyes. "It will help to narrow down the search range."

Sachiko silently sighed. She knew she'd have to at least tell Lillian's 'Ace' photographer what it was he was searching for if she intended to obtain her assistance in the matter, but at least the younger girl with the rimless glasses wasn't twittering around her like some fangirl. Nor would she threaten to go to the media about her odd request. "It embarrasses me to admit it," she blushed a bit, "but I'm looking for any stories that might mention a certain school legend that has recently been brought to my attention."

"Oh, you mean Azumi-chan?" the younger girl grinned.

"H-how...?" the older girl sputtered in surprise.

"It was just a guess on my part," Tsutako chuckled at Sachiko's reaction, "but I thought that of any of the seven mysteries that you might be interested in, Sachiko-sama, the one about the Rose Mansion Ghost was most likely at the top of the list."

"You're too smart for your own good, Tsutako-san," Sachiko smiled teasingly, bringing a flush of color to the photographer's cheeks. "Yes, it was Azumi-chan, or whatever her real name is, that brought me to ask for your help. I've read all of the old stories the library holds," that chore had finally been accomplished just the previous day with no more stories or light shed upon the issue, "and I was hoping that possibly the old editions of the _Kawaraban_ might hold something more."

"The newspaper _is_ more along the lines of the Enquirer," the younger girl laughed. "At least they don't try to come up with stories about alien abductions…although," she suddenly stopped speaking and seemed to be in deep thought.

"Oh, have there really been alien abduction stories?" Sachiko laughed softly.

"No, no," the glasses girl waved her hands as if to brush away the notion, "I was just thinking. I was going back through some of the old _Kawaraban_ editions a few weeks ago, trying to compare my photography skills to those of photographers of the past, just pulling them out at random, and I happened come across a story from about, oh, the mid-sixties or so that caught my eye. It talked about a student that had disappeared on her way home from school one day. When she didn't show up for school the next day the administration thought that she might just be home sick, but her parents called later that morning frantic over their missing child. There was some huge investigation, some people said she might have been abducted, and the girl's brother was even questioned by the police, but he was eventually cleared of any wrong doing. I didn't really go looking for any follow-up stories, but I got the impression that the girl, or her body, was never found."

"Do…do you think you could find that story again?" Sachiko asked in an excited voice, her heart starting to beat at a furious pace and thumping heavily in her chest. Depending on the year of the story, the date might be coincidental to the third story she'd read about Azumi-chan.

"Hmm, yes, now where was it," Tsutako softly asked herself as she started digging into stacks of old newspapers looking for the right year. "Ah! Here it is," she proclaimed exultantly after a few minutes of searching. A much dirtier, newsprint covered Tsutako-san triumphantly held the newspaper out to the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton to see.

Sachiko took hold of the old and decrepit paper with slightly shaking hands, her eyes drawn immediately to the photograph in the very center of the top half. It showed a very cute girl with brown hair done up in pigtails, sparkling brown eyes, and wearing an older style of the Lillian school uniform. It looked like one of the school yearbook's standard photographs. Above the picture was a headline reading "Have You Seen This Girl?" Beneath the photo, in small italicized print, was a name.

"Fukuzawa Yumi," she breathed in a soft voice.


	4. Chapter 3

Yumi was once again sitting on the sill of the front window of the Rose Mansion's second floor meeting room. Her day had pretty much begun like every other day that she'd had to live through these past forty-six years. But these days she watched the sun rise with a bit more eagerness and hope that the girl she'd recently taken a liking to would be showing up soon.

All of the girls of this year's Yamayurikai were extremely interesting.

There was the perpetually bored Eriko Torii, this year's Rosa Foetida, who only seemed to go through the motions unless something of interest caught her eye. Everything the girl did was perfect so there was almost no chance that she'd blunder and actually make something interesting happen on her own. Yumi thought that it must be a very boring life if you knew that everything you did would turn out just exactly as you had planned it.

Then again, life was pretty boring when you weren't able to do anything, or affect anyone or anything, in the first place either.

Then there was the Rosa Gigantea, Satou Sei. She by herself was a very interesting character. Yumi had watched with trepidation as the previously withdrawn Sei gave her heart, mind, body, and soul to a girl only to have her dreams of love slashed to ribbons when the girl left her to join a convent. The change in that young woman, from thoroughly depressed to outwardly ebullient dirty old man and out-of-the-closet lesbian was in itself shocking.

Because of her circumstances Yumi couldn't say what it was that occurred with Sei during the two weeks of winter break after Shiori had supposedly left her at the train station, but whatever it was the blonde had come back with shorn locks and completely different attitude…at least on the surface. Outwardly ebbulient, yet more fragile than a newborn on the inside. Hollow. Yumi was able to watch the heartbroken tears fall from her eyes when Sei thought she was alone in the Rose Mansion. The tall blonde had seemed to perk up a bit after she'd found her petite soeur - Shimako found some way to fill those hollow spaces within her onee-sama - but there were still some days when Yumi could see the lingering pain in the other girl's eyes.

The other members of the council were interesting in their own right as well, especially given the secrets each of them seemed to be harboring. There was the meddlesome Youko, who if Yumi were to hazard a guess was secretly in love with Sei. Then there was the manly and athletic, but secretly very girly Rei and her cousin and petite soeur Yoshino who was a ball of fire frustratingly stuck in a sick body who was secretly, or not so secretly, in love with her older cousin. Added to that mix was the angelic and unflappable Shimako who was harboring the secret of being a Catholic girl from a Buddhist family temple.

Last, but not least, there was the girl Yumi was slowly finding herself unable to stay away from whenever she was inside the Rose Mansion: Sachiko Ogasawara. Just the thought of the raven haired beauty with her deep sapphire eyes sent shivers down Yumi's incorporeal spine. Yumi was sure that Sachiko too had a secret, but she didn't as yet know what it was. All she knew was that it had something to do with the fact that she hated men.

Yumi's patience once again paid off as she saw two members of the Yamayurikai walking slowly down the cobblestoned steps of Lillian toward the front door to the Rose Mansion. It didn't take long for the two girls to make their way up to the meeting room and for the younger blonde, Shimako, to begin making a fresh cup for her grande soeur.

Yumi watched from her window perch as the girl sometimes called the 'Angel of Lillian' poured out the old water left overnight in the electric teapot and then added fresh water before plugging it in to heat. The pigtailed specter knew Sei preferred coffee over tea and she smiled as Shimako-san got out a jar of instant coffee and placed a teaspoon of the dark brown granules into the bottom of a teacup.

Sei on the other hand, took a seat at her usual place at the table and started looking through some of the paperwork Youko had left for her the night before. It wasn't long before she started fidgeting and Yumi had to laugh at just how quickly she got back up from the table with a sneer for the papers resting at her spot.

"Youko's going to be the death of me yet," Sei whined, bringing a smile to her petite soeur's face as she poured the now hot water over the dark crystals and stirred the mixture. Turning she handed the steaming cup of coffee to Sei with a small, chiding smile.

"I'm sure that Youko-sama is only hoping that you'll do your fair share of work, for once, onee-sama," she giggled.

"Well, that may be her hope," Sei smirked, taking the offered cup and moving toward the window in which Yumi was sitting, "but I'm afraid she's going to be greatly disappointed." As the tall blonde moved to take a seat, her petite soeur squealed.

"Onee-sama! Not…" Sei looked back at her, her face a picture of confusion as she took her seat on the window ledge, Yumi first standing and moving through the blonde's body and then sauntering across the room to take the seat next to where she expected Sachiko would sit when she finally arrived.

"What's the problem, Shimako-chan?" Sei asked with a raised eyebrow. "Did you see Sachiko's ghost?" she chuckled.

Shimako rolled her eyes and sighed before turning back to the cabinets and making herself a cup of green tea. Sei gave up her teasing and turned to look out the window, an activity she'd taken up the previous year right after returning from the winter holidays.

Finishing making her tea, Shimako turned to move down to the other end of the table, stopping briefly at its head.

"I want to apologize for my onee-sama," she whispered so low that only if a person were standing or sitting directly next to her would they have been able to hear the words of apology. "She really doesn't mean to be rude," she said just as softly.

"I know," Yumi replied with a gentle smile, even though she knew the other girl couldn't possibly hear her voice. "No insult was intended nor taken."

"Thank you," the dark blonde haired angel smiled serenely and gave a short, relieved nod of her head.

As Yumi had thought, this year's group of Yamayurikai members was certainly an interesting one. Even though she didn't show it in her outward behavior, inside she was both shocked and overjoyed with the now sure knowledge that Shimako-san could actually see her, at least partially. Maybe it was her Buddhist heritage or maybe it was something else, but Yumi was thrilled that she might have someone new to interact with. She'd long harbored hope that the serene and angelic Shimako might be able to see her. It wasn't anything specific that she could point to, just the way that the younger girl sometimes would look over in her direction. The dark blonde girl never actually acknowledged Yumi's presence, but every so often Yumi would catch the other girl seeming to be looking _at_ her rather than past or through her.

For the first time in over thirty-five years, ever since the day Hiroshi-san first stopped to speak to her when she was resting on the apex of the Rose Mansion's roof, she had someone new to interact with!

-oo-

With a total population of over one hundred and thirty thousand along with a major hospital, Musashino kept the lone Shinigami assigned to the area relatively busy ferrying recently departed souls between this realm and the next, but not so busy that Hiroshi couldn't take a few minutes break every so often to swing by Lillian Girls' Academy to check in on Yumi-san. Sometimes, like the last time, he'd actually stop in and try to speak with the poor girl. Those were the days that usually ended up with him being overly depressed. Other times, like today, he'd simply stop outside the second story window and look in to see if she was still there and, if so, what she was doing. He would still end up depressed on days like this because of her sad story, but typically not as bad as when he tried to speak with her.

Today, however, he was in for a shock. As he secretly spied on the interior of the building - solid walls no more of a challenge to his unique abilities then was floating three meters above the ground - he was surprised to see Yumi sitting next to one of the girls from the Yamayurikai…and they actually seemed to be talking! Or, at least the dark blonde haired girl was talking. Yumi, on the other hand, seemed to be excitedly trying to mime responses as she spoke, knowing that the blonde couldn't actually hear her. It was the first time that he'd ever seen the pigtailed girl interact with anyone but himself.

It was also the very first time he'd seen her with a genuine smile of happiness on her face.

In fact, she was nearly bouncing in her chair she was so excited. It was interesting to watch as she'd grin widely only to then turn about and frown as something she was trying to communicate wasn't able to cross the boundary of her muteness. He decided to tune in to their conversation just as Yumi's frustration seemed to boil over. The brown-eyed girl actually cursed, another first for him, and then slammed her hand down on the table top. Both girls eyes widened in surprise as the sound reverberated through the room and Shimako's cup of tea rattled on its saucer.

Hiroshi well knew that Yumi could sometimes affect the material world, but it usually took one of two things: extreme emotions or extreme concentration. He'd just seen the first and it now appeared from the smile on Yumi's face that she intended to attempt the second.

-oo-

In a rush, but with at least an attempt at a verbal apology to Shimako-san, Yumi dipped her finger into the cup of tea that sat in front of the blonde. She then closed her eyes to try to help focus her concentration. It always ended up giving her a raging headache when she tried things like this, but other than saving Sachiko the last time, there was really nothing more important to her than these next few minutes.

The brown-eyed girl was thankful that Shimako-san seemed willing to allow her to attempt this, because the normally serene girl never uttered a sound as Yumi, at first, felt the heat and wetness of the tea around her finger and then, concentrating almost as hard as she was praying to Maria-sama that this would work, lifted her finger from the cup and, with a fluid writing style (no pun intended) wrote out the kanji for her name. It took three achingly long attempts, but she finally finished and opened her eyes to see a smiling Shimako-san.

"Fukuzawa Yumi-san, my name is Todo Shimako, and it is a very great pleasure to meet you," the blonde grinned happily.

At first Yumi could only stare in shock, and then a wide smile split her face and she couldn't help but squeal and clap with delight.

For the first time in such a very, very long time, someone knew her name!

-oo-

"Fukuzawa Yumi," Sachiko breathed out the name, liking the way it sounded falling off her tongue.

The raven haired girl was lying on her bed at home attempting to assimilate all of the information she had been able to dredge up that afternoon on the disappearance of a Lillian Girls' Academy first-year student in April of 1964.

As soon as she'd been handed that newspaper she'd graciously thanked Tsutako-san for her assistance and had then sat down to read the _Kawaraban_ article as the photographer started looking for any follow-up articles. While the overall reporting had been relatively decent for a high school newspaper, it had been much too sensational with very little fact but much in the way of speculation. However, because the police had become involved, and because the missing girl was a Lillian student, it had hit both the local and Kanto region media.

On the web she found a little bit more in the way of back articles from the main newspapers, but even they hadn't spent much time worrying about putting all of those old editions onto computers. So she moved from the Lillian Library to the reference room at the Musashino Public Library. There she found the old micro-fiche files and had been able to piece together a bit more information. However, the most complete information on the supposedly still open but dead case was at one particular website.

The story, as told by the writer, spoke of a young girl and her brother, Yumi and Yuuki, who were very close. While Yumi had gone to Lillian, Yuuki had been a student at Hanadera Boys' Academy. One day Yumi had gone to meet her brother at the Hanadera bus stop to ride home with him when supposedly another Lillian student had gotten into a heated argument with Yumi.

It seemed that the girl thought Yumi was trying to "hit on her man" and she started screaming and yelling at the pair. Anyone else looking at the two young students, Yumi and Yuuki, would have easily been able to tell that they were siblings because they looked almost as alike as twins, but this girl seemed to have missed that fact in her anger.

There had been a minor scuffle, Yuuki had attempted to protect his sister by placing his own body between hers and the other girl, and then the girl had yelled out some gibberish and run off. Yuuki had thought the strange episode was over, but when he turned around to see if his sister was all right, it was to instead find that she'd disappeared completely.

The strange girl hadn't given her name, and a search of all Lillian students at the time was similarly unfruitful. It was assumed that she'd somehow stolen or otherwise come across a Lillian uniform but most likely attended another school. The police assumed that she'd somehow become infatuated with Yuuki-kun and had come to consider him her sole property even though Yuuki claimed to have never seen the girl before in his life. At first the police had questioned him on his sister's disappearance, but he'd eventually been completely cleared as a possible suspect.

Just before she'd logged off her computer for the evening she'd noted the name of the company sponsoring the website and requesting anyone with information to please contact them.

The company was Fukuzawa Design.

There was still nothing specifically linking Yumi to the Rose Mansion Ghost except for the similarity in the descriptions of the girl between the newspaper article and the former Rosa Gigantea en Bouton's story. Despite that, Sachiko found herself somehow believing that the two were linked; that the coincidence in descriptions was just too close, as was the timing. The disappearance and the Christmas party story were four years apart. Close enough for the two girls to be the same person, and yet the possible abduction was far enough in the past for it to have fallen from the students' memories.

"Fukuzawa Yumi-san," the blue-eyed heiress whispered again. "Yumi. Are you and Azumi-chan really one and the same? There's no proof, but I feel it in my soul that it's true. If it is, then what happened? How did you go from a sidewalk in front of Hanadera to haunting the Rose Mansion? There are still too many unanswered questions," but Sachiko felt that she was on the right track. "And here I promised Eriko-sama that I'd disprove the existence of Azumi-chan. Instead I seem to be doing the exact opposite. Or is Yumi's disappearance simply the catalyst for the creation of the Azumi-chan legend?"

Deciding that her mind was just too wound up with questions and far too few answers to accommodate sleep, Sachiko got up and pulled a silken robe around her nightgown before opening the doors to her balcony and stepping out into the cool breeze.

"Who are you, Yumi?" she whispered into the night.


	5. Chapter 4

It was a long and laborious effort that frequently ended with Yumi nearly passing out from the headache that the strain of concentration brought on, but over the next two weeks she was able to somewhat parcel out to Shimako-san the story of how she'd become the Rose Mansion Ghost.

She'd already told the beautiful and extremely corporeal girl about the argument and fight at the bus stop in front of Hanadera Boys' Academy and the gibberish the strange girl had shouted at her.

"I think she must have been some kind of witch or even a youkai, because the next thing I knew I was here in the meeting room of the Rose Mansion. Yamashiro Haruka-sama, the Rosa Foetida at that time, was in the room, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get her to see or hear me," she explained slowly to the current Rosa Gigantea en Bouton. It had gotten slightly easier for her to draw out the kanji in tea on the table so that they could have a real conversation, but frequently they took breaks and tried to hold their conversations such that they could be handled via pantomime or simple nods and head shakes for which Yumi was extremely grateful.

Unfortunately today wasn't one of those days.

"I can't even begin to believe how frustrating and scary that must have been for you, Yumi-sama." Shimako said with a shake of her head and a shiver down her spine. She was about to comment about how horrible it must have been for Yumi to be stuck in the mansion, able to see and hear, but not able to actually be seen by or speak with anyone, when the door to the empty meeting room they'd been enjoying swung open with a bang and Sachiko stomped into the room in an obvious snit about one thing or another.

It had been like this for the past week or so. The normally quiet and reserved "Ice Princess" of Lillian, the one that typically only showed strong emotions when completely frustrated or scared, had become increasingly angry, argumentative, and antagonistic. At yesterday's meeting she had even gone so far as to yell at her onee-sama regarding her inability to find a petite soeur of her own.

"How dare she! That stupid, gossip mongering newspaper editor!" Sachiko nearly screamed as she stomped over toward the small set of cabinets to fix herself a cup of tea from what Shimako could see was the tin of chamomile tealeaves. "That…that BITCH!" the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton nearly screamed as she spooned far too many leaves into the bottom of her cup.

"Sachiko-sama," Shimako squeaked as she stood up and quickly moved to assist her senpai. "Please, allow me to serve you." She tried to speak as calmly and quietly as she could in an attempt to use her seeming ability to sooth the ragged emotions of others.

"Th-thank you, Shimako-san" Sachiko stammered before stopping to take a deep breath to settle both her anger as well as her nerves.

"It's no trouble at all, Sachiko-sama," Shimako smiled up at the older girl, turning the "Angel of Lillian" persona she usually wore in public up a notch, happy to see that her efforts seemed to be bearing fruit. "Why don't you go take your seat and I'll bring it over to you as soon as I've finished." As Sachiko seemed to be considering the offer, the dark blonde girl reached into a cabinet above her head and pulled out a small box of almond cookies that she'd brought in earlier in the week. "While you wait, maybe you'd appreciate a taste of something sweet? It will go very nicely with your tea."

"Yes," Sachiko smiled weakly, gently taking the proffered pastries from Shimako's soft and gentle hands along with the napkin the cookies rested upon, "thank you, Shimako-san. As usual, your very presence is like a balm for the soul." Shimako just smiled, trying hard not to laugh as Yumi-sama was so obviously doing at the other end of the room.

Yumi-sama!

Their conversation!

The Rosa Gigantea en Bouton nearly poured scalding water over her hand in her haste to finish Sachiko's tea while at the same time grab a damp cloth from the small sink so that she could wipe the evidence of their conversation from the table top.

"You really should be more careful with your tea, Shimako-chan," she heard Sachiko chuckle as the older girl obviously noticed the dregs of liquid spread across the meeting room table.

"I-I'm sorry, Sachiko-sama. I was startled when you came in," she explained, hoping that the only partial lie would make the second-year student think that she was just as partially at fault and thereby remove the raven haired girl's focus from the "spilt" liquid. "Please, let me clean it up for…" her words trailed off as she turned to see Sachiko's face pointed directly at the kanji on the table, her face becoming paler and paler as she read the words there.

Yumi was quite ineffectually trying to wipe the marks away with hands that, even given her obvious fright, never quite touched the damning liquid.

"You…you should never lie, Shimako-chan," Sachiko said in a soft, quivering voice. "M-Maria-sama is al-always watching." She lifted her eyes to her fellow, frozen, bouton. "What," the older girl swallowed with difficulty, "what is this?"

Shimako sighed in resignation and walked sedately over to where Sachiko stood staring at the marks on the table. As gently as possible, the "Angel of Lillian" guided the now nearly stupefied older girl to her seat, sat her down, and placed the cup of chamomile tea in her hands.

If simply writing was difficult, Shimako knew that what she was now going to be asking of her would strain Yumi-sama to her very limits, but it couldn't be helped. Taking a step back so that she stood behind but between Sachiko's chair and the chair to her immediate right, she took a deep breath.

"Rosa Chinensis en Bouton, Ogasawara Sachiko-sama, it is my very great pleasure and privilege," she used her right hand to indicate the empty chair, "to introduce you to Fukuzawa Yumi-sama, a Lillian first-year student...

"...from 1964."

Very slowly, the strain on her face evident at least to Shimako, the image of a young girl in an older style Lillian uniform very slowly faded into existence in the chair to Sachiko's right; a sheepish and embarrassed smile on her cute face, her brown hair up in pigtails, and her brown eyes seeming to be pleading for something.

"It," Sachiko coughed wetly into her trembling hand, "it is a pleasure to meet you, Fukuzawa-san," she said in a strained voice, to which Yumi replied with another, slightly bigger smile.

Whereupon Sachiko finally lost her battle of nerves and proceeded to slump into unconsciousness.

-oo-

Sachiko's little trip to dreamland didn't last very long, maybe ten minutes. But even as she slowly emerged from Morpheus' realm, she could easily read the worry and concern on Yumi-chan's face. Now that the girl…ghost?...appeared more solid, it was easier to forget the fact that she had literally appeared out of thin air.

"Are you all right…" Sachiko barely read Yumi's pink lips, the last words being lost to her, but probably her own name. Not that she could read lips, but it was a logical question for someone to ask and, for some reason, she could almost read the expression on the girl's face easier than her words.

"I…I'm fine, thank you Yumi-chan," she replied while wiping a hand across her brow, happy to find that it was dry. The answering smile seemed to brighten the room by several lumens and went a long way toward reducing Sachiko's anxiety levels.

Shimako returned from the small kitchenette with a glass of cool, if not necessarily cold, water and placed it into Sachiko's hand.

"Drink," the younger woman ordered in a voice quite similar to her onee-sama's; one that would brook no argument.

Sachiko raised an eyebrow at her imperious expression, but did as she was told. The cool water soothed her dry mouth and did wonders to help clear her still somewhat sleep-fogged head.

"Thank you, Shimako-chan," she chuckled, smiling up at her kohai. "Just what the doctor ordered."

"I've dealt with more than a few people that have fainted for one reason or another out at our family shrine," Shimako returned the smile. Sachiko, along with the three Roses and Rei-sama, were the only ones that knew of her situation of being the Catholic daughter of a Buddhist family that ran its own shrine.

"I did not faint!" Sachiko exclaimed with false indignation. "I was simply…resting my eyes." Even though she was embarrassed at her weak reaction to Yumi's sudden appearance, she couldn't see anything but laughter at the situation.

Yumi seemed to agree with her seeing as she was doing her utmost – badly – to hide her own giggles behind her hand.

Shimako then did what she rarely got a chance to do. She laughed out loud, which caused Yumi to lose her own composure completely and Sachiko to join in after only a moment's attempt to hold on to her own false bravado. That laughter went a very long way to relaxing the three occupants of the meeting room.

"Before you begin your explanation of…this," Sachiko told the other two with a wave of her hand at the three of them before turning to face Yumi directly, "I would like to take this opportunity to formally thank you, Fukuzawa-san, for your timely interference in my fall earlier this year. Without your help I'm sure that I would have been severely injured"

Yumi shrugged her shoulders and dipped her chin, a blush suffusing her cheeks as she acknowledged Sachiko's thanks.

_Can ghosts blush?_ Sachiko wondered. Either way it was quite cute.

It was good that there had been no scheduled meeting of the Yamayurikai that day. Shimako explained that she had originally chosen to spend the day with Yumi-sama for that very reason and had looked forward to another fruitful discussion…until they had been interrupted by the incensed Sachiko.

After receiving Sachiko's heartfelt apology, along with her explanation that it had been her extreme frustration of having run into a brick wall in her own search for information regarding Yumi-chan and the Rose Mansion Ghost that had set off her "pique" not only that day but for the last number of days, the three settled down to tea and, mostly Shimako's, telling of Yumi's tale.

A long two hours later, Sachiko finally felt that she had answered just about every question she had about Yumi-chan.

All except one.

"Can you please tell me how you got into this predicament?" she begged the highly translucent girl sitting to her right. It had been a long and obviously tiring experience for Yumi and it showed in both her face as well as her fading presence.

The smaller girl shrugged, sadly.

"The most we've been able to figure out, Sachiko-sama," Shimako explained, "is that the other girl, the one that shouted the gibberish at Yumi-sama and blamed her for trying to take Yuuki-kun away from her, must have been a witch. A kijo." Shimako shivered just at the sound of the word. She might be Catholic now, but she'd grown up with both the Buddhist and Shinto mythologies drummed into her head. "Whatever she did, whether it was a spell or a curse, we don't know yet. I'm looking into it with my father along with some Shinto friends of ours." She then turned to look at her newest friend with a look of concern. "Yumi-sama says that she believes it to be a curse, given what she knows about how it might eventually be 'lifted'."

"You know how to lift it, Yumi?" Sachiko exclaimed excitedly, happy to think that there might be some way she could help the girl. But one look at the disconsolate ghost told her otherwise as tears tracked down Yumi's sobbing face.

"Unfortunately, Yumi is unable to tell us what it takes. It seems to be similar to the curses you might hear of in fairy tales or even some Disney movies. Until 'X' happens, you will forever live like 'Y.' And, just like in some of those cases, she either cannot or is not allowed to say what it would take to lift the curse. It's up to us to figure it out."

"Then by Maria-sama that is what we're going to do!" Sachiko emphatically promised. "You saved me once, so I'm going to do everything within my power to save you, Yumi!"

Despite Sachiko's declaration, Yumi continued to weep until she slowly faded away.

-oo-

Fukuzawa Yuuki did what he did every single night before shutting down his computer and going about the process of making dinner for himself; he checked the website he had created detailing the disappearance of his sister and asking for any information.

Long ago, when he'd first set up the site, he had offered a substantial reward for any information about his sister's disappearance or whereabouts, but after having his hopes raised so many times only to have them crumble as the information provided didn't pan out, he'd stopped offering any rewards. Too many people thought that they could come into some easy money if they simply read through the old newspaper articles trying to glean some kind of information or, worse, made up stories out of whole cloth.

Not once had anyone contacted him with any real information that might help in the search for his missing sister.

His parents had wasted a fortune searching for her until they'd eventually had to declare bankruptcy. Yuuki hadn't blamed them in the least. He'd have done the exact same thing. No amount was too small if it would return his beloved sister to him.

His parents, Miki and Yuichiro, had eventually gone to their final resting places without ever knowing what had become of their daughter.

After finishing his first year at Hanadera Academy, Yuuki had transferred to a much admired, but significantly cheaper, local high school where he studied architecture so that he could follow in his father's footsteps. The two men, with Miki's help, had done just barely enough to get by while continuing their search for his missing sister.

The search would have continued if the bank hadn't decided that the nice, two-story western style house they lived in was worth much more than the paltry amount of the loan his parents carried. The bank had called in the note, immediately payable in full. Even with their limited resources the Fukuzawas had hired an attorney to fight the bank and, after a long, drawn-out battle, won their case.

Only one problem.

When they couldn't pay the attorney all of the "extra" fees he charged them at the end of the case he ended up taking the house himself.

For the next twenty-one years, three years after his mother passed away and until a year after his father's death, Fukuzawa Design was run out of the three bedroom apartment Yuuki shared with his parents.

Since then he'd moved into a smaller, two bedroom apartment where he used one bedroom for sleeping and the other as his office so that he didn't have to entertain his few clients in his living room.

In all that time he had never given up hope that one day he and Yumi would be reunited.

Yuuki had just sat down to a dinner of convenience store yaki udon when he heard a knock at his door. With a sigh he put his dinner back in the microwave for reheating before making his way to see who would be interrupting him at this time of night. The last thing he'd been expecting was a _very_ large western-looking blonde man in a black suit wearing sunglasses at eight o'clock at night.

"May I help you?" he asked his visitor. Instead of answering, the man glanced around the sparsely furnished room, noted the lack of available weapons on or near the person standing in front of him, nodded as if he were satisfied with the situation, and then stepped to the side to reveal a young woman with long, raven-black hair and sapphire blue eyes.

"Fukuzawa-san? My name is Ogasawara Sachiko, and I was wondering if you would be willing to take a ride with me?" She took a small sniff and her smile widened even further. "I can assure you that I can provide you with a much better meal than the udon you would be missing."

The sixty-two year old man standing in his own apartment glanced back into his kitchen to where his dinner was awaiting him, and then to the paperback, original mass market English copy of Fitzgerald's _The Great Gatsby_ resting on a table near his armchair – it was a small pleasure that helped him to sleep at night – before turning back to the teenager at his door. With a sad smile, he addressed the young but powerful woman in front of him.

"I'm sorry, Ogasawara-sama, but I'm afraid that there's not much an old man like me would have to offer you or your family. I'm just an old architect, and not a very good one at that. I'm decent enough to get by, but not of a caliber that would interest the Ogasawara Group."

"Ah," Sachiko smiled, up at him, "but I'm not interested in your talents as an architect. I'm interested in your relationship to Yumi-chan."

Yuuki staggered at the sound of his sister's name such that the tall man to his right reached out a large but extremely gentle hand to hold him up and then steady him while he regained both his equilibrium as well as his emotions.

"Y-Yumi-ch-chan?" he struggled to speak through his rapidly closing throat. He hadn't heard anyone but himself utter that name in more than fifteen years.

"Yes," Sachiko smiled at him again, this time seeming to be a little more unsure of herself. As if she was maybe second guessing the wisdom of her visit. "I," she faltered for just a moment, "I want to learn more about her."

"If you want to talk about Yumi," Yuuki smiled for the first time since he'd opened his door, "I hope you have enough time. I assure you that I can go on for hours on end."

"I'm willing to give you as much time as you need, Fukuzawa-san," the blue-eyed girl replied in as serious a tone as he'd yet heard from her. "I," she faltered again, and for the first time he saw real emotion in those deep blue eyes. That emotion was _need_, an emotion with which he was intimately familiar. "I have to know more about her," she begged. "I just have to!"


	6. Chapter 5

Dinner with Fukuzawa Yuuki left Sachiko with many answers, but even more questions about the girl with which she'd spent the afternoon.

After she told him that she'd already looked over the information on his website regarding his sister's disappearance, Yuuki had glossed over the actual encounter and spent more time speaking about his family's attempts to find Yumi; all unsuccessful. He'd then gone into telling the young heiress everything about his sister, from her birth only ten months before his own, to every little incident he could remember of her through her primary and middle school years.

His love and adoration for his sister came through in both his words as well as in his expressions.

"I remember she'd been looking so forward to finally getting into Lillian's high school division," the old man smiled sadly as he glanced down to the small amount of food remaining on his plate. Using just one chopstick he went about spreading and then smoothing the rice, much as one would do with a Zen sand garden. Even still, Sachiko knew that his eyes saw not the rice nor the plate, but some other scene entirely.

"She had always loved going to Lillian. The school, the grounds, the other students…she'd loved it all. And they'd loved her." He stopped his hand's movements, gently laying the chopstick on his plate so as to pull out a handkerchief and wipe at his suddenly glistening eyes. "Yumi had high hopes of finding an onee-sama and dreamed of having her own petite soeur. She was such a caring girl with so much love in her heart. Anyone, senpai or kohai, would have benefited greatly from her calm and caring wisdom." He sniffed and used the handkerchief to quietly blow his nose.

"There was just so much she wanted to do and see. It was…it was the last week in April and Yumi had been a high school student for all of two weeks when we were accosted by that girl."

Tears were running freely down his cheeks by this point so he politely excused himself from the table to attend the restroom while he tried to regain what little pride he had left to him.

Sachiko had chosen a mid-priced, at least for her family, restaurant in which to eat. She and her mother had eaten in the establishment often enough that she knew the menu by heart, so she had simply asked the waitress to bring a small and varied selection so that Yuuki-sama would be sure to find something to his taste. Doing it that way also ensured that he didn't worry about what the meal would be costing. What she was learning about Yumi the girl, rather than Yumi the ghost, was more than worth the price of a simple meal.

Despite the difference in their ages, Yuuki-ojisan reminded her a lot of his sister. They also had something else in common – a haunted aspect to their deep brown eyes.

Based on her brother's reminiscences, the Fukuzawa Yumi pre-1964 sounded like the sweetest girl Sachiko could ever hope to meet. Even assuming that Yuuki-ojisan was looking at the past through an overly thick pair of rose colored glasses, there was enough detail in the stories of Yumi's youth to paint what she believed to be a fairly accurate portrait of the pigtailed girl. They only made her that more determined to try to find the answer to the curse's riddle.

"Oh, Yumi. Why couldn't you have been born into my time?" the blue-eyed girl wondered wistfully.

She had originally thought that she might invite Yuuki-ojisan to visit the Rose Mansion and possibly meet up again with his sister in her current form, but had quickly thrown that idea away as she had watched and listened to him. She now knew that doing such a thing would only bring pain to the both of them; something she was loath to do. If anything, she would prefer to be the one to strike that haunted and painful look from their eyes and replace it with joy and happiness.

She had never before felt this drawn to anyone. In all her seventeen years of life she had never once cared enough about a single individual, even her onee-sama, to want to make them happy no matter the cost or consequences. And not even once had her hatred of men arisen in Yuuki-ojisan's presence. Looking at him, all she could see was a much older version of Yumi. Just lengthen the hair and she was sure she was seeing Yumi at the age of sixty-two.

At least physically.

She desperately wanted the sixty-two year old Yumi to not have the same pained look in her eyes as had ridden in her brother's ever since that fateful day at the Hanadera bus stop.

Sachiko's thoughts were brought up short when Yuuki drew out his chair and returned to his seat.

"I apologize again for allowing my emotions to get away from me," he smiled sadly to his hostess, the redness of his eyes testimony to the fact that he's spent much of his time away from the table crying.

"No, Fukuzawa-sama," Sachiko replied softly, going so far as to reach across the table to lay her hand atop his, "it is I that must apologize. I'm sorry that my curiosity has been the cause of your distress, and for that I am deeply sorry."

"Please, don't be," Yuuki grinned. "Despite my unseemly waterworks, it's been wonderful to be able to talk to someone about my sister. I lead a relatively solitary existence these days. Unless I need to meet with my few clients for one reason or another, about the only time I leave my apartment is to go to the convenience store on the corner for food or to the library for books to help me sleep. Rest assured," he smiled up at her, his eyes sparkling this time not from moisture, but from true if subdued happiness, "you've made me very happy this evening, for which I thank you."

Looking just at his face, beyond the age and slight wrinkles, Sachiko could see Yumi smiling at her and it made her heart thump strongly in her chest. She wanted to see that smile again. She wanted to see that happiness shining out at her.

But she wanted to see it on the face of a certain ghost.

-oo-

"All of the fairy tales seem to depend on the kiss from one's true love to break the spell," Shimako replied to Sachiko's query regarding how best to lift Yumi's curse. "Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Swan Princess, Beauty and the Beast…even Shrek."

"Somehow I don't think that a kiss will suffice," Sachiko sighed disconsolately.

"Are you quite sure about that?" the dark blonde girl tilted her head to one side and smirked, bringing an unexpected grin to her raven haired companion.

After the Yamayurikai meeting - one at which Yumi did not make an appearance, leaving both boutons to believe that the efforts of the previous day's manifestation had most likely been quite draining on the poor girl - the two had elected to meet again at a small family restaurant located just outside of the Academy's gates.

"You've been spending too much time with Sei-sama, Shimako-san," Sachiko chuckled. "She's a bad influence on you."

"I wonder if that's true," Shimako replied with a chuckle of her own, intimating that the two might be more alike than most people credited.

Sachiko tried to imagine the quiet, angelic Shimako as an outgoing and fun-loving lesbian lothario and was quite surprised at how easy it was to picture. Obviously there was a depth to the Rosa Gigantea en Bouton that would one day have to be explored.

One day, but not today.

Today the two Lillian students were meeting in an attempt to brainstorm possible ways to remove Yumi from her predicament. They hadn't been able to come up with any concrete suggestions as of yet, leading to Sachiko's reiteration of the issue at hand and Shimako's somewhat romantic if illogical response.

"Whether that is the case or not," Sachiko responded to Shimako's second statement before returning to the first, "I can't believe that the solution would be something as simple as a kiss."

"Ah, but I didn't say that just any kiss would do the job…but that it would take the kiss of 'one's true love.' That is something altogether different."

"And a situation that is quite unlikely to occur," Sachiko rebutted. "From what she's told you, the only person that Yumi has had any repeated contact with since the incident is this shinigami she mentioned, Hiroshi-kun."

Even the normally unobservant Sachiko could read the look of disbelieving exasperation on her kohai's features.

"Please, Sachiko-sama, even you can't be quite that dense," the blonde beauty said while shaking her head in annoyance. "Didn't you notice how Yumi was looking at you yesterday? Hasn't the fact that she _always_ sits in the chair to your immediate right sunk in yet?"

As the implications of those words smashed their way through Sachiko's normal obtuseness whenever it came to relationships, her eyes widened in disbelief even as she started to shake her head in denial.

"No. There's no way that she could feel that way about me, Shimako-san. No way! I mean, we only just met yesterday!"

She then cringed at the gusty sigh that escaped Shimako's lips accompanied by a rolling of her blue-grey eyes.

"Sachiko-sama, _you_ may have only met her for the first time yesterday afternoon, and I might have only been speaking with her for the past couple of weeks, but I've watched her ever since I first walked into the Rose Mansion earlier this year at Youko-sama's request. I've seen the way her face lights up when you walk into the room. I've seen how crestfallen she is when Youko-sama tells us that you won't be attending that day's meeting. You are the _only_ person that brings her happiness. Just the sight of you coming up the walk seems to lift her spirits."

"But…but," Sachiko stammered, still not wanting to believe what she was hearing.

"Look, I'm not saying that you feel the same way about her, or even that you are her 'one true love.' Honestly," Shimako shrugged, "I don't even know what you'd look for in a relationship…" Sachiko had been in enough business meeting with her father to recognize that the blonde had allowed her statement to trail off in the hopes that her companion would fill in the silence. Even after having recognized the trap, Sachiko was unable to keep from taking the bait.

"I've never thought much about it," the sapphire-eyed heiress mused quietly, once again glad that they'd chosen a table for two in a back corner of the restaurant so that their conversation couldn't be easily overheard by the few Lillian students also partaking of the restaurant's offerings. "I mean," she paused, grappling with herself briefly before continuing, deciding that she could trust in Shimako's honor and discretion, "I have a cousin that's gay," she admitted softly.

"When I was younger I was sure that I loved him and that we would one day marry." She smiled sadly. "It turned out that it was only a child's dream. After our parents announced that they would see us wed, solely for business purposes and not for ourselves, my cousin informed me that he could only be romantically involved with other men and that I should look to find myself a lover after the wedding; that he wouldn't stand in the way of my happiness. It was that cold and calculating statement, made by a man that I had thought I loved and whom I had mistakenly thought loved me as well, which made me hate men of all kind and stripe. I'm sure he thought that he was doing me a favor by allowing me to take a lover, but it became obvious to me that he cared more for the business and what the Ogasawara name could give him than he had ever cared for me.

"So," she sighed, "I guess that in answer to your question, I personally don't have anything against same-gender relationships, but…but I also don't think that there is anyone out there that could love me in that way."

Shimako was silent for a moment before she spoke in a quiet and obviously controlled voice.

"I don't know whether to take you in my arms and hold you and tell you it'll be all right, or to slap you silly for being such a flaming idiot, Sachiko-sama."

Sachiko was both confused and fuming at her fellow Yamayurikai member's response to the baring of her soul. How could she!

"Have you not been listening to what I said?" Shimako leaned closer to her over the table. The angry expression on those normally serene features forced Sachiko to lean back in her chair. For the first time since she'd met her, Sachiko was actually intimidated by Shimako-san.

"First off, if you take that attitude just because one man turned you down, no matter how much you childishly thought you loved him, then you're a stupid fool," she snapped. "Everyone gets their heart broken at least once in life. It's almost a rite of passage from childhood into adulthood! Get over it!

"Secondly, have you heard a word I've said about Yumi-sama? She. Loves. You! Although right now I can't for the life of me see why!" With that the dark blonde girl sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "Either way, you're a damned fool!"

It was at this point that Sachiko would normally have blown up and stomped out in a huff. Instead, she found herself chuckling, unable to come up with a single argument against Shimako's attack. The younger bouton was right. Sachiko _was_ a flaming idiot.

"So," the raven haired second-year student laughed softly, "I guess what you're saying is that I should just kiss Yumi?"

The smirk on Shimako's lips would have done Sei-sama proud.

No one had ever said that Youko-sama was the only one that was good at meddling in the affairs of others.

-oo-

Shimako sat a moment and thought before she answered Sachiko-sama's question. More important than seeing if she could get the two women together, she first had to think about what was best for Yumi-sama. While it would be wonderful if one kiss from Sachiko-sama's lips would do the trick, she felt that it would be better to hold onto that option as a backup plan.

"Let's table that idea for now," Shimako sighed. "I wouldn't want to get Yumi-sama's hopes up just to have them dashed if it didn't work. She's been stuck in this prison for nearly half a century with only an occasional visitor and no real hope for parole. I'm worried about what might happen to her…what she'd do if it didn't work.

"First I'd like to ask some of my friends in the Shinto community if they have any ideas. I've already asked around a bit without much success, but I have one more person that I'd like to consult with. If _she_ doesn't have any ideas, or can't offer a solution, then we'll come back to the kiss idea."

Looking up to see Sachiko's reaction, she was a bit surprised as well as a bit happy to see that the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton actually appeared to be pouting at the thought of having to wait to get her kiss. She nearly giggled, but she could just as well be wrong so squashed the feeling so that she didn't overly embarrass her friend.

"I'll stop by her shrine tomorrow and see what she has to say. Either way, I'll give you a call later to let you know the outcome." Seeing Sachiko nod, but still with that small sad smile on her face, she reached over to pat her senior's hand.

"Don't worry, Sachiko-sama," she said with a consoling manner, "it's just a slight delay. And it has nothing to do with the way Yumi-sama feels about you. The thing you need to be thinking about right now is exactly what you feel for Yumi-sama."

Sachiko slowly closed her eyes and turned her hand over so that she could gently grip Shimako's in her tender grasp. She didn't say a word, but she nodded her agreement.

And with that Shimako had to be satisfied, knowing it was the best she'd get from the girl right then. The result of her meddling wasn't as great as she had hoped, but it wasn't a total disaster either. All she could do was pray to Maria-sama that things would work out.

For everyone.


	7. Chapter 6

The next day, after the completion of the council meeting, Shimako asked Sachiko to wait until everyone else had left for the day using requesting some assistance with her homework as an excuse. However, shortly after the last of the others left the mansion, there came a knock at the door to the meeting room. Shimako quickly got to her feet to open the door for their visitor.

"Gokigenyou, Kada-sama," Shimako bowed to the young girl who entered the room wearing the uniform of Lillian Girls' Academy, but instead of the high school division's white scarf, she wore the thin black ribbon of the middle-school division.

"Please, Shimako-san, you know how I hate it when you call me that. Haven't we known each other for nearly ten years? I'm still just your childhood friend, Yukiko-chan," the small girl huffed with unfeigned annoyance. Sachiko almost expected her to stomp her foot in pique and couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of her puffed out cheeks.

The girl was slender and relatively short, over ten centimeters shorter than Shimako-san, with shoulder length light brown hair. Her matching eyes sparkled with life even as she rolled them at Shimako's excessive politeness and reverence. Then, as she turned to see who it was that had laughed, her eyes widened in surprise. Her shock caused her to stumble over her words as she rushed to copy Shimako's previous bow. The result was too precious for words and Sachiko smiled even wider.

"Ro-Rosa Chinensis en Bouton, I-I am Yukiko Kada, a second-year in the Chestnut class of Lillian's middle-school. It is a very great honor to meet you!" The younger girl held her bow and Sachiko let out a soft giggle at the absurd situation.

"Yukiko-, um, san," Sachiko replied, deciding half-way through her introduction to take the middle road between –sama and –chan that Shimako-san seemed to be having difficulties with, "I am Ogasawara Sachiko, second-year pine class. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, although I must admit that I'm a bit baffled as to your presence here today." So saying, she turned and gave her fellow bouton a curious look.

"Oh, Sachiko-sama," Shimako blushed a bit for having failed in her duties, "I neglected to mention it to you, but Kada-sama is the head Miko at the Igusa Hachimangu Shinto Shrine just outside of Musashino. It is she with whom I wanted to consult regarding our situation."

Whereupon, Yukiko turned just slightly to her left, Sachiko's right, and bowed once more.

"And you must be Fukuzawa Yumi-sama. It is also a very great pleasure to meet you, senpai." Yukiko-san then turned to look at her childhood friend with a greatly displeased face. "What the heck have you been doing to this poor girl? She's as white as a ghost!" Even before Shimako had a chance to answer, the miko was turning back to the invisible girl at Sachiko's side. "Whatever it is, Yumi-sama, please, have a seat. You look exhausted, and even in your present situation, sitting has to be better than standing."

Putting action to words, Yukiko moved to pull the chair next to where Sachiko was standing away from the table and then, after a brief moment, pushed it back in slightly. It was as if she were seeing a man helping to seat his lady friend at dinner. Sachiko could only watch in complete frustration being the only person in the room that couldn't see Yumi-chan. She briefly allowed her vexation to show on her features before she schooled herself once more and took the seat just to Yumi's left, allowing Yukiko-san to take the one to the specter's right.

"To answer your question, Yukiko-chan," Shimako stated as she ensured Yukiko and Sachiko had a hot cup of tea and then took a seat to the miko's right, "Yumi-sama spent a good couple of hours yesterday attempting to remain visible for Sachiko-sama and I'm afraid that it tired her out."

"I'm not surprised!" the youngest girl in the room squeaked and turned back to Yumi's chair with a look not unlike awe. "The strain must have been tremendous! I'm surprised you held out so long, Yumi-sama." The miko then laid her hand on the table in front of Yumi's chair, palm up. "Please, drink of my power and replenish yourself. Don't be embarrassed, and don't be apprehensive, I have plenty to spare. It would make things easier on all of us. Just take my hand and I'll do the rest."

A moment later Yukiko's hand seemed to gently clasp Yumi's, but Sachiko could only guess at that from her actions.

The guesswork was laid to rest, however, when first fingers, and then a hand, mostly translucent, began to appear. Over the next ten minutes or so, Yumi slowly appeared, but nowhere near as opaque as she had been the previous day. Even still, Sachiko could see that the girl was much paler than before. It was like the difference between healthy pink skin and someone who was nearly at death's door. It truly frightened the raven-haired girl.

"Yumi-sama," Yukiko smiled at the ghost, getting a wan smile in return, "please feel free to continue drinking my power. You definitely need it. In the meantime I'm going to try to read your aura." The miko's voice was calm, soothing, and yet no-nonsense at the same time. It was the voice of a respected doctor with a tremendous bedside manner, or an old and well loved and respected priest.

Yumi simply nodded her head, at which Yukiko closed her eyes and dropped her chin slightly before she began to chant so softly that Sachiko couldn't even begin to understand the words. Yet if anything, that soothing voice relaxed her even more.

As did having Yumi sitting there in the chair next to her. It felt right…like something that had been missing had finally returned. Or like a hole had been filled. Having the pigtailed girl next to her just felt…proper…natural…as if she'd always been there and always would be.

Without volition or even conscious thought, Sachiko found herself reaching out her own hand and laying it palm up on the table. At first Yumi's eyes widened in surprise, then she gave the bouton a true, happy smile before laying her hand on top of Sachiko's. Whether it was the miko's power flowing through her, or some other happening, Sachiko could just barely feel the weight of the other girl's hand and, like Yukiko-san, she gently clasped that translucent hand within her own.

_Warm_, she thought, and smiled again. _This is one of the hands that I felt on my back that day that she saved me. They are just as warm, and strong, as I remember._ She gave the hand held gently within her own a slight squeeze and was rewarded to feel the barest of squeezes in return. If she could have smiled any more she was sure that her smile would have rivaled the noonday sun.

_This is Yumi! This is my Yumi!_

-oo-

Shimako had seen Yukiko-sama do this same aura reading any number of times and knew that it was taking much longer than it usually did. Whether it was due to the subject of the reading, or the difficulty in reading the aura, or simply extending the time so that the miko could give even more of her power to the obviously drained Yumi-sama, she wasn't sure. In fact it could be all three or any combination thereof. Nor did it really matter. What mattered was the end result of the reading.

After nearly a half hour of the quiet chanting, and watching Yumi and Sachiko stare into the depths of each other's eyes, barely blinking, Yukiko-sama slowly opened her eyes and sat back.

The look on her face wasn't overly generous.

The brown-eyed shrine maiden had to cough to get Yumi's attention, and even then it was difficult to get her to keep from looking back into Sachiko-sama's eyes.

"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid that I'm not going to be much help with your situation, Yumi-sama," she said regretfully. "I can see the curse, but it is so intricately wound with your own chi that there is no way I could easily extract it. There's too great a chance that I could damage your life force and no guarantee that I could get the entire curse. If it's easier, you might think of it as an inoperable brain cancer or tumor. I can try to surgically excise it, but I might just as easily cut out something that you need to live. At the same time, I could just as easily miss a part of it, leaving you in just as bad if not a worse condition." The clearly distraught miko shook her head. "I'll do some more research, but even then I can't promise I'll find anything else."

"Isn't there anything you can do, Kada-sama?" Sachiko asked in a voice near to begging. Moisture brimmed in her eyes and her voice shook with emotion to the point that Yumi reached over with her other hand to clasp Sachiko's in both of her own. A look akin to sorrow as well as remorse could be easily read in her features.

Shimako had to bite her lower lip to keep herself from openly weeping at the disheartening diagnosis.

"As I said, I'll keep looking, but," Yukiko sighed and shook her head sadly, "the only way to surely remove the curse is to fulfill its requirements. Unfortunately I can't read them, so I can't advise you as to what that might be." She looked up into Yumi's eyes, the tears in her own plain for all to see. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Yumi smiled and nodded, slightly to the side, telling her it was all right and thanking her for trying in the first place.

From Shimako's standpoint it was also easy to see the pain in those sad brown eyes. Yumi had wanted so badly for this to work.

"Shimako, could I speak with you a moment…alone," her young friend asked. At her nod, Yukiko told the remaining two that she would be back in a few moments.

The two stepped out onto the balcony and quietly closed the biscuit door behind them.

"Yukiko-chan?" Shimako asked softly.

"It's as I said inside," the miko sighed. "The curse and Yumi-sama's chi are so tightly interwoven it's impossible for someone to remove one without damaging the other. I don't even know if Kyoko-neechan could do it. Hell! I'm not even sure that Inare-kamisama could do it! That damned kijo was one evil sonovabitch!" She shuddered even as she said the word.

"Still, I want to thank you for trying, Yukiko-chan," Shimako thanked her friend with another slight bow while ignoring the younger girl's less than lady-like language. For some reason it seemed appropriate to the situation. "I also want to thank you for giving Yumi-sama some of your power. She looks much better than she did when you first arrived."

"It's the least I can do," the younger girl smiled sadly. "I just wish it wasn't the only thing I could do."

"I know, Kada-sama, but I thank you anyway," Shimako offered, returning briefly to thanking the office of the miko rather than her old and dear friend. Yukiko seemed to understand this since she didn't make a fuss about it, accepting the older girl's bow and returning it with one of her own.

When Shimako and Yukiko returned to the meeting room, it was to find Yumi and Sachiko once again holding hands and staring into each other's eyes. No words were being spoken, but it didn't seem to the blonde bouton that any words were necessary. Their eyes and facial expressions said it all.

"Um, Sachiko-sama? Yumi-sama?" Shimako asked the two to get their attention. "I'm going to see Yukiko-chan off at the bus and then head home myself. Please, Yumi-sama, don't tire yourself out again. You need to conserve your strength."

"Let me echo Shimako-san's warning," Yukiko added her voice. "We don't know what will happen if your energy gets too depleted, so I advise you to rest. I'll keep looking," she said again, "but I'd suggest that you two," she said, indicating Sachiko and Shimako, "try to keep thinking of ways that we might break this curse." Turning back to Yumi, the young miko bowed. "I'll check in on you again in a few days, Yumi-sama. In the meantime, try to rest."

Yumi smiled and nodded her head before turning back to Sachiko and, with a look that coupled desire with sadness, started to fade away.

"I-I'll keep trying, Yumi," Sachiko stammered emphatically, squeezing the two hands that she still held in her own. "I won't give up. I'll never give up!" she cried out.

Yumi smiled at her again, mouthed a few words, and then slowly faded into nothingness.

She hated to do it, but Shimako left Sachiko quietly weeping there in the meeting room. She knew that the older girl would need some time to herself before heading home for the evening.

Just as she was closing the door she looked back at the forlorn girl. Yumi was nowhere to be seen.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as she gently closed the door behind her.

-oo-

Sachiko wasn't the only one that had been desperately hoping and praying that Yukiko-sama's efforts wouldn't be in vain.

After she allowed herself to fade from their sight, Yumi slid up through the ceiling to the unused attic space and then to the apex of the roof. The sun was just setting, casting shades of yellow, orange, and red across the sky. She wished that she had her paints with her, but those too had been lost to time. All she could do was commit the scene to her memory, much as she had the sight of Sachiko-sama's weeping face and the soft touch of her hands.

Anyone walking past the Rose Mansion at that time would have clearly heard the sound of two young women crying.


	8. Chapter 7

The Rosary.

For the vast majority of the faithful the Rosary is a symbol of Marian devotion and piousness with more than four hundred years of history and direct Papal support. But for the students of Lillian Girls' Academy's high school division it has another, much more secular purpose. For more than a hundred years the rosary has been a symbol of mutually chosen - rather than biological - sisterhood. The rosary is passed from grande soeur to her chosen and accepted petite soeur in a simple but solemn ceremony.

The rosary might be as simple as a set of carved wooden beads strung on twine or as intricate as a master jeweler's artistic combination of precious metals and gems. It is typically worn as a necklace or bracelet, but however made or worn it is a symbol of a spiritual and emotional connection between two young women who, for most pairs, lasts a full lifetime. It is never a relationship to be entered into or dissolved lightly.

On one particular Saturday afternoon not quite a week after one of the most powerful mikos in the country read the aura of a sixty-two year old teen who had spent the better part of a half-century caught within the confines of a nefarious curse, Sachiko Ogasawara sat at her place at the meeting room's table, her eyes not quite focused on the simple platinum rosary in her hand. A rosary given to her by her onee-sama, Youko.

Not too many weeks ago she had been thinking about waiting until the start of the next school year before offering that very same rosary to her younger cousin, making Touko her petite soeur and, by default, the next Rosa Chinensis en Bouton. But that was before she'd been saved from a nasty fall on the narrow stairs of the Rose Mansion. Before she had ever heard of the Rose Mansion Ghost. Before she had spent three weeks searching through the Lillian Library for any shred of news of that ghost.

Before she finally found a name for said ghost.

Fukuzawa Yumi.

Now those sapphire blue eyes, shining brightly with the light of the sun coming through sheer draped windows, only partially saw the shining rosary in her hand. Her mind's eye was instead focused on brown hair done up in pigtails. On liquid brown eyes that shone with life despite all that she had been forced to endure. On lips of the palest pink moistened by a tongue that could not speak.

"Yumi."

The name was a whisper, a prayer, and a dream. It was her heart's greatest desire condensed into a single word that surpassed every dream that had come before and all dreams that would come after. It was the alpha and omega of her existence.

It frightened her and, at the same time, gave her hope. Hope for what, she still wasn't too sure. All she knew was that it was a word, a name, a person, that she wanted to be by her side for all the days to come.

"Yumi."

It was pain. And guilt.

Pain for having to bear witness to the agony, loneliness, and waning spirit imperfectly hidden behind brown eyes incapable of subterfuge. Guilt for being unable to alleviate even some small portion of that loneliness and pain.

"Yumi."

It was the touch of soft, pale, translucent skin against her own. Two hands clasped together in harmony. Two dreams shared. Two hearts that seemed to beat as one. Two souls…

A soft sigh escaped rose colored lips, and within that sigh, a name.

_Yumi._

-oo-

At the moment, Shimako was the only witness to the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton's sad calling of a name.

Yumi hadn't quite made herself scarce for the past week, but neither had she been ever-present as she had in the past whenever Sachiko-sama was within the Rose Mansion's meeting room.

And when she _was_ present, it was as if she was only barely there. A shadow glimpsed from the corner of the eyes, but invisible when looked straight upon. And when she was there it was always in the same spot; sitting in the chair at Sachiko-sama's right hand as if ready to perform any duty the bouton might require. Even seen indirectly, Shimako could see beyond the smile on her face to the disconsolate heart that beat within her breast.

It was a scene that broke her heart.

"Yumi?" Sachiko called out softly, and then again slightly louder. "Yumi?"

Shimako would have sworn to Maria-sama that only she and Sachiko were in the meeting room, but the cursed girl proved Shimako wrong as Yumi slowly faded into existence, already seated exactly where she always was; next to her dearest and beloved Sachiko.

"Yumi," the raven haired bouton smiled, her eyes shining with more than the simple gladness of seeing a friend. That shine was mirrored in Yumi's eyes.

"I've been doing a lot of thinking recently," Sachiko said softly, her entire being focused solely on the girl sitting next to her, "as I'm sure you're aware," she grinned and a matching grin and nod came from the silent brown haired girl. "I think we were both disappointed that Kada-sama couldn't help you, but that's not what I've been thinking about," she went on.

A puzzled look came over Yumi's face, but disappeared immediately when Sachiko reached out to take her hand.

"What I've been thinking about hasn't anything to do with the lifting of your curse. Do you understand, Yumi?" Yumi nodded. "Good, because what I've been thinking about is pure selfishness. It's not about something you want, although I'm hoping that it will be. Instead, it's all about something that _I_ want. Something I desperately want for myself. I'll say it as clearly as I can. This is for me. Understand?"

Yumi nodded again, a small smile creeping on her lips.

"Onee-sama has been pushing me to find a petite soeur," she explained. "I'd originally thought that I wanted to wait until my younger cousin, Matsudaira Touko-chan, became a first-year high school student, but even then it would only be because I already know her and not because I hold some deep affection for her. She would have simply been a means to an end. In fact, I had given up thinking that I would ever be able to find someone that I could care enough about…love enough to make them my petite soeur.

"But that was before I met you, Yumi," Sachiko whispered and blushed. "You're everything I could ever have wanted in a petite soeur." Yumi started shaking her head in denial, but Shimako saw the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton squeeze the ghost's hand tightly and even give it a shake. "Yes, Yumi. You! You are sweet and caring. You have a heart bigger than anyone I've ever met. You are also the strongest person I've ever met. Even with all you've been through, you're still here, still trying, still caring, still loving, still willing to help anyone in need. That's a strength that I could never have, because I am by nature a weak and selfish creature. So it's a strength that I need beside me, to keep me strong as well. To make me think not only of myself, but of others as well.

"Even when I can't see you, I know when you're there by my side. I feel stronger, and at peace when you're next to me. I feel weak and alone when you aren't. That's why I say that what I'm about to ask is purely my own selfishness. It's not for you. It's not for anyone else but me." Sachiko took a deep breath as her blue eyes bore into brown ones less than half a meter from her own. Without taking her eyes away from Yumi, her next words were directed at the only other occupant of the room.

"Shimako-san, would you please be my witness?" she asked. "I can think of no one I'd rather have at this moment…except for this wonderful girl beside me."

"Of course, Sachiko-sama," Shimako replied with a smile.

Throughout her little speech, Yumi had grown more and more solid, as if she were anticipating what was to come next. In fact Shimako had never seen her more "present" than she was at this time as Sachiko gently drew her to stand.

"As I said, at this moment I could care less if this lifts your curse. If it does, I'll be the happiest person in the world. If it doesn't," she shrugged. "At this moment, that doesn't matter to me. What does matter is…Fukuzawa Yumi, will you please do me the very great honor of becoming my petite soeur?"

Shimako had to cover her mouth to stifle the squeal of delight that was fighting to escape as Yumi violently nodded her head in the strongest "yes" she thought she could manage.

Sachiko let go of Yumi's hand, but only so that she could take the necklace of the rosary she held in her other hand and stretch it out so that she could slip it over Yumi's bowed head.

Yumi grasped the cross hanging at the end, the brightest smile on her face, and Shimako held her breath.

It was only for a moment, a few seconds at most, but eventually first the cross slipped through Yumi's fingers and the necklace slid through her neck as the rosary fell almost silently to the floor.

"Like I said," Sachiko said even as she bent to retrieve the sacramental, "I wasn't expecting it to lift your curse." She stood and put the rosary back into her skirt pocket. "It doesn't matter. I'll hold onto it for a while," she told the still smiling Yumi, "until the day that I can once again put it around your neck." Sachiko reached out and gently took the brown-eyed ghost by the shoulders and turned her so that they were directly facing each other and then took her into her arms.

For the first time, Sachiko and Yumi shared a hug that even Shimako could tell they both felt.

"With Shimako-san as my witness, Fukuzawa Yumi is from this day forward my one and only petite soeur."

"Right?" she demanded of her sister.

Yumi nodded vigorously, her smile never faltering as they embraced again, this time for much, much longer.

-oo-

"Yumi, will you…will you let me kiss you?!"

It was the very next day and Sachiko had been up nearly the entire night trying to think of some way to lift the curse on her precious petite soeur. Even in her new found happiness she had been unable to forget the pained look of hopelessness on Yumi's face as she slowly faded away after the failure with Kada-sama. She'd tried to hide it behind a smile just as she always did, but Sachiko had been able to see clearly through that false facade of bravery. The girl had gotten her hopes up - they both had - only to have them dashed. She could have sworn she'd seen a tear fall just as Yumi had disappeared.

Yumi's one tear had been followed by many of her own.

Shimako-san and Yukiko-sama had been kind enough to leave her to her misery so that her tears wouldn't be shed in public. Sachiko had wondered if Shimako had cried herself to sleep later that night just as she had. With Shimako's kind heart and caring nature it was impossible to see her not being moved by Yumi's continuing plight and their failure to alleviate it.

Throughout that night and every night thereafter Sachiko strove to come up with something, anything, any kind of plan or idea that would lift Yumi's curse, but the only thing she could think of was the idea that Shimako had mentioned to her mostly in jest. She'd felt her face and neck flush on multiple occasions at the thought of kissing the younger girl, but she'd put it off as a normal reaction for any girl who'd yet to have her real first kiss. Of course, she'd kissed her family members before, even her male cousin, but never with romance in her heart.

_Romance?_

She didn't believe that a kiss shared with Yumi would be of the romantic sort. It was only to try to lift her curse. Right? So then why had she frequently found herself blushing for no reason as she impatiently went through her classes that day? Why was it that the clock on the wall seemed to be moving in slow motion every time she thought about meeting with Yumi after school?

It seemed that more than Yumi's plight had found its way into her heart. The girl herself had somehow worked her way into that place where she'd once thought no one would enter.

"But that's impossible," Sachiko murmured to herself as she watched the minutes and seconds tick away on the classroom's clock. "Not only is she a girl, she's still a ghost…or the next best thing to one. There's no way that I could be romantically interested in her. Of course, I love her as my petite soeur, but not…"

A cough from the front of the room caught her attention and she raised her head to see the teacher giving her a surprised look. A quick glance to either side showed that a few of her fellow students were also giving her odd looks. With a blush of embarrassment Sachiko mouthed an apology to her teacher and went back to taking notes, leaving thoughts of Yumi and what might happen later that day for after classes had ended.

Which brought her right back to her question and the resulting surprised look from the pale girl sitting next to her in the Rose Mansion's meeting room.

"I-I know it's an odd request, and it's probably just wishful thinking on my part, but, but Shimako and I, we thought about all of those old fairy tales where, where the princess was awakened from her curse by the kiss of a prince and, well," Sachiko couldn't help but stammer at her silly explanation, but she felt that it was important for Yumi to properly understand, "I, I may not be a prince, but in another time I would have been a princess and, and I didn't want to, to leave any stone un-unturned. I don't know if it will end up any better than the last time, but…"

Her mouth snapped shut and she raised her head to see a soft tint suffusing those pale cheeks. She could easily see that she'd embarrassed the poor girl with her seemingly outlandish question and even stupider explanation. But she also saw a flash of hope in those deep brown eyes as the younger girl nodded sheepishly.

A look of intense concentration then came over Yumi's features and she once again began to solidify.

Slowly, just like the last time, first Yumi's hands became less pale and translucent as her fingers and then her palms took on a rosy hue. Again without thought, Sachiko grasped the hand closest to her and squeezed gently, trying to will her own life force into the pale child. She closed her eyes and begged of Maria-sama that maybe this time things would go right. That this time she'd be able to break the curse.

Never before in her life had she prayed so hard for something. To have Yumi by her side - solid and filled with the warmth of life - never had she wanted anything more than this!

_Surely, if Maria-sama is kind, she'll give this to us. With two hearts desperately yearning for the same thing, surely our wishes won't be ignored. Please, Maria-sama, please here our prayers!_

"Sachiko-sama," she heard a soft voice break through her thoughts like birdsong through a morning haze. Opening her eyes she found herself drowning in the depths of a brown ocean.

_Have Yumi's eyes always been this beautiful?_

"Sachiko-sama?"

_Or her voice? Yumi's voice? Her actual voice?!_

"Yumi?" Sachiko stammered just a bit as she swam up from those warm depths to see a concerned look on the younger girl's face. "Yumi? You. You're speaking? I can hear you? I can hear you!"

Brown eyes widened in imitation of the shock in Sachiko's own eyes.

"Y-you can hear me?" Yumi squeaked. Her hands flew to her lips as her eyes sparkled with delight. Then her lips moved but no words reached Sachiko's ears.

Sachiko quickly grasped one of Yumi's hands again.

"…ear me," Yumi squealed with delight.

"Only if I hold your hand, Yumi. Only if I'm touching you can I actually hear you. If we're not touching then I can't hear you anymore."

"Eehh? Oh! Oh! That's certainly new! I mean I've touched Shimako-san before, and I touched Yukiko-sama yesterday, but neither of them ever actually heard me before…not that I really tried all that hard. I mean, all I could ever do in the past was mime or spell things out. This is…this is…" Yumi shook her head in joy and wonderment.

Even in her excitement Yumi's voice was soft and sweet, a perfect match for her features and her personality, and Sachiko couldn't stop herself from grinning giddily. "Fantastic," Sachiko whispered.

"Yeah. Fantastic," Yumi echoed her. Her smile likely just as wide as her own.

"Um…"

"Yes, Yumi?" Sachiko asked the suddenly shy girl whose cheeks were flushing.

"Would you…would you ask me again?" Yumi asked in a quiet, cute little voice.

"Ask what?" Sachiko queried, not quite sure what Yumi was talking about.

"Would you…ask me the question you asked me earlier? About…" she couldn't seem to finish her question as her cheeks and even her neck and ears turned bright red.

"What? Oh!" Sachiko exclaimed as she recalled the question she'd asked the younger girl and her own cheeks turned pink with embarrassment. It shouldn't have mattered. She'd already asked once before, but for some reason having Yumi able to actually respond with words was suddenly much more intimidating. Still…

"Yumi, will you let me kiss you?" she asked again, this time with a bit more assurance even through her embarrassment.

"Yes…please," Yumi replied in a voice somewhere between a whisper and a squeak as her lips curled up into a shy smile.

A matching smile found its way to Sachiko's face and, with not a little trepidation and worry, she leaned forward.

_She's so darn cute, but this is just to see if it will break her curse. Nothing more. It can't mean more than that_, she told herself as she leaned further, watching as Yumi also leaned toward her. She could feel Yumi's breath against her lips and her eyes closed of their own accord in anticipation.

When lips tentatively brushed it was like being struck by lightning. Sachiko's heart rate tripled and it felt as if her heart wanted to burst from her chest. A shiver ran down her spine and set her fingertips and toes tingling along with everything in between. Her brain turned to mush as warm, soft lips pressed harder into hers, and when she felt a hand gently caress the nape of her neck, pulling her even closer to Yumi, she couldn't help a small moan from escaping.

The sound forced reality to snap back into place.

_It's just to break her curse_, she kept telling herself over and over.

The kiss was both long and nowhere near long enough as Yumi was the first to pull away. It took a moment for a languid Sachiko to open her eyes and when she did she wished to Maria-sama that she'd kept them closed.

Tears framed Yumi's brown eyes and even through the forced, fake smile Sachiko could see the girl's heart break into a million pieces.

"Th-thank you…for trying…Sachiko-sama," Yumi murmured so softly the raven haired bouton had to strain to hear her voice. It was a voice that broke her own heart with the level of pain it held.

Yumi seemed to want to say something else, but she just shook her head strongly, tears flying to her left and right and a couple landing on Sachiko's uniform as she suddenly pulled her hand away and, without another word or sound simply blinked out of existence.

"I'm sorry, Yumi," Sachiko whispered as tears streamed from her own eyes to darken the fabric of her uniform. "I'm so sorry," she sobbed, covering her eyes with her hands.

"I'M SORRY, YUMI!" Sachiko wailed.


	9. Chapter 8

Hiroshi had been stopping by the Rose Mansion on the campus of Lillian Girls' Academy more frequently as he watched the recent goings on in wonder. After she'd begun interacting with Shimako-san, Yumi had gone from taciturn and depressed to excited, smiling, and laughing. Her happiness had then soared when she'd become Sachiko-san's petite soeur. Then it seemed things might have taken a turn for the worse as her depression returned when she realized that becoming a petite soeur had not lifted the curse, but even then it seemed as if she still had some kind of hope, no matter how distant.

However, he had not been able to locate her for the past few days.

He knew that she was still somewhere in the building, but she'd somehow found a way to hide herself even from him. More than once he'd heard her crying, but the sounds echoed around to the point where it was impossible for him to pinpoint her location. After the third consecutive day Hiroshi decided that enough was enough.

-oo-

It was after classes and Shimako was making a cup of tea for her onee-sama while trying to do her best to ignore the feelings of utter despair emanating from the very walls of the Rose Mansion when the biscuit door slammed open and a young man walked through.

"Todou-san, what the _fuck_ happened to Yumi-chan?!"

Sei was up out of her window seat and standing between the boy and her petite soeur before either one of them had a chance to move.

"A better question is who the _fuck_ are you and what do you want with my petite soeur?" she demanded of the intruder, fire spitting from her grey eyes. "And who the fuck is this Yumi-chan you're talking about?"

"Onee-sama," Shimako said softly and in warning as she took a step toward the angry young man still standing just inside the door. Instead she ran into the arm that Sei had thrown in front of her.

"No, Shi-chan, don't get too close to this bastard," Sei said through gritted teeth.

"Shit! I don't have time for this," the boy said angrily as he took a step toward the pair, his hands fisted at his sides.

It was a step that Sei wasn't willing to give him and Shimako shouted a warning as the tall blonde threw a wicked right hook at the boy's jaw. It passed right through without connecting to anything. Her momentum caused Sei to stumble and she nearly fell…

…right through him!

"What the FUCK?!" she screamed as she turned back around. Another swing and another miss as the boy took another step toward Shimako.

"Onee-sama, stop!" the younger blonde screamed even as Sei tried one last time to grapple with the young man only to end up falling through him again and landing in a heap on the floor.

"It's all right, onee-sama," Shimako screamed as she dropped to her knees and put both hands on Sei's shoulders where she lay on the floor to keep her from getting back up. "He's not here to hurt anyone." She turned to look up at the angry young man. "Right, Hiroshi-dono?" she guessed.

"Great, now that everyone knows everyone else, answer my question! What happened to Yumi-chan?" Hiroshi demanded.

"Who the hell is…," Sei started to yell again only to have her lips crushed by Shimako's in a heavy kiss. The senior was too dumbstruck to even move let alone let out her voice.

When Shimako broke the kiss she nearly giggled at the wild-eyed look on Sei's face.

"Onee-sama," she whispered in as placating a voice as she could, "I'm sorry, but I _really_ need you to calm down. Hiroshi-dono isn't here to hurt anyone and Yumi-sama is…" here she faltered. How to explain in as few words as possible? "Yumi-sama is Azumi-chan," she finished with a sigh.

"Do it again," Sei murmured.

"Onee-sama?"

"Do it again," Sei repeated as her lips turned up into a smirk. "Kiss me again and I promise I'll listen and not beat up your boyfriend."

"As if you could," Shimako smirked back, but leaned down to deliver another soft kiss to Sei's lips. "Okay?" she asked after just a momentary sharing.

"Not really. I'd like to explore this a bit more," Sei said with an evil grin as she reached around to give Shimako's butt a quick squeeze, causing the younger girl to roll her eyes, "but I guess I'll have to take what I can get."

"Lecher," Shimako grinned.

"Tease," Sei said right back.

"If you two are quite finished," Hiroshi sighed in exasperation, crossing his arms over his chest, "We have a problem and it's not going to get fixed if you two are just going to make goo-goo eyes at each other."

"Goo-goo eyes?" Sei chuckled. "How old is this kid?"

"A lot older than he looks, onee-sama," Shimako smiled. Getting to her feet she held her hand out to help Sei up. "Hiroshi-dono is the shinigami assigned to the Musashino area."

"And he's here for Azumi-chan?" Sei asked as she stood and then took a seat at the table, the idea that there was a shinigami with them in the meeting room of the Rose Mansion seemingly of no more import than the fact that the sun was shining.

"Her name isn't Azumi. It's Yumi. Fukuzawa Yumi-sama," Shimako sighed. She turned to get her grande soeur her tea and set it at the table before turning to Hiroshi with a questioning look.

"Yes, please. Earl Grey if you have it," the boy sighed as he noisily pulled out a chair took a seat himself, thereby proving, at least to Shimako, that he could switch from corporeal to incorporeal at will. "And to answer your question, Satou-san, no, I'm not here to take Yumi-chan. I can't. At least not yet given her current situation. But if something isn't done, and soon, I very well could be taking her with me."

"You're taking all this quite well, onee-sama," Shimako chuckled as she poured the steaming water over a few leaves, completely ignoring Hiroshi's statement, "at least now that you've calmed down and aren't trying to kill someone."

"It's my duty as your grande soeur to protect you," Sei shrugged. "Even if it's from some form of," she turned to look at the young man seated at the table with her. "I've always wondered. What exactly _is_ a shinigami?"

"Let's just say I'm a death spirit or, in the modern parlance of some of today's television shows I'd probably be called a 'Reaper'," the dark haired boy replied with a nonchalant wave of his hand, his pique still quite evident to Shimako, "although most days I feel more like a taxi driver or baby sitter. I just make sure that the newly departed soul gets to where it's supposed to go."

"You have some interesting friends, Shi-chan," Sei chuckled as Shimako placed a cup of tea in front of Hiroshi.

"Actually, I've never met him before," Shimako replied. "I've just heard about him from my father and friends…and Yumi-sama"

When Shimako was finally seated at the table as well, she turned her attention to the young man that she could now see wasn't so much angry as concerned and maybe a little frightened.

"Now, I know that something happened to Yumi-sama, but I have no idea what it might be. Sachiko-sama is involved somehow, but she's not saying a word even though she seems just as depressed as Yumi-sama." Shimako stared at her own tea for a moment before continuing. "I want to help them, really I do, but I'm not sure how I can. I mean," she waved an arm around, indicating the room they were in, "I can feel her despair. It's mortifying. It feels like she's completely lost the will to live; if whatever life she's had for the past forty some odd years can be called a life."

"I can't disagree with you there, Todou-san," Hiroshi shrugged. "I've known her since 1974 and as far as I know she's been stuck here in the Rose Mansion the whole time. She can sometimes sit on the roof, but that's as far away from the building as she can get. Most of the time she just sits in that window," he pointed to the building's front window next to the cabinets, "and stares out at the students passing by. It's been better recently, what with you being able to communicate with her, and I've actually seen her happy for the first time…ever! But whatever happened a few days ago has thrown her into so deep a depression that I'm afraid she won't be able to recover. I've never heard of someone dying from a broken heart, but that's what I'm afraid will happen to her if we don't do something quickly. Can you please tell me what's been happening that could have caused this?"

So Shimako explained what had been happening to Yumi ever since the day she'd saved Sachiko from a fall down the steps.

"Excuse me," Sei broke in, raising her hand to get their attention, "and correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is that this Yumi-chan, the Rose Mansion Ghost, isn't really dead at all, but is actually under a curse of some sort and you and Sachiko-chan have been trying to find a way to lift it? You've even brought in a miko but had no luck?"

"That's the long and short of it, onee-sama," Shimako replied with a shrug of her shoulders.

"And a few days ago something happened that put Yumi-chan into a deep depression?"

"Yes."

"Around the same time that Sachiko-chan became so depressed and stopped coming to the Rose Mansion and isn't even talking to anyone?"

"Yes."

"And you think Yumi-chan is in love with Sachiko-chan?"

"Yes."

"And you think Sachiko-chan might be in love with Yumi-chan as well, but she hasn't yet realized it or for some reason can't accept it?"

"Yes."

"…"

"Onee-sama? You're smiling."

"I am, aren't I?" Sei chuckled evilly.

"That's your wicked smile. You're planning something diabolical, aren't you?" Shimako grinned.

"Now, would I do something like that?"

"Whatever it is, it's scaring the crap out of me, and I'm a damn Reaper!"

Hiroshi shuddered as Sei's smile grew even wider.

"Dear Kami-sama, save me!" the boy wailed.

-oo-

"I told you, onee-sama! I already have a petite soeur!" Sachiko yelled, feeling herself leaning forward and just about ready to spring out of her chair.

Youko had shown up at her classroom a few minutes before the end of school and literally pulled her out the door with only a quick explanation to her teacher that she was needed for Yamayurikai business. It might have been all right if that were the case, but ever since they escaped the school building Youko had done nothing but rail against her about not having a petite soeur. Their argument had lasted the entire journey to the Rose Mansion and even through the gathering of the rest of the council members.

"Then why haven't I met her?" Youko sighed in exasperation. "Why haven't you brought her around to meet everyone?" she asked with a wave of her hands at those sitting at the table, most of them cringing in their seats and wanting to be just about anywhere else at that moment.

"Shimako's met her," the blue-eyed Sachiko stated and pointed at the blonde sitting near the far end of the table. "She even witnessed the ceremony."

"If that's the case, then why," Youko reached out a hand and grasped the sparkling piece of jewelry around her petite soeur's neck, "are you still wearing the rosary I gave you?" she asked, giving the offending article a shake so that it jingled.

"It's…a long story," Sachiko sighed, feeling defeat in the air.

"I will attest to the ceremony, Youko-sama," Shimako spoke up on Sachiko's behalf and bringing a victorious smile to her lips. "Sachiko-sama asked and the girl accepted. She even put her rosary around the girl's neck."

"This rosary?" Youko asked, giving it another shake, dashing Sachiko's hopes once again.

"Y-yes," Shimako said, her head falling forward a bit in shame or guilt since she couldn't really explain the situation any better than Sachiko herself could.

"I'm just holding onto it for her until…I mean, just for a little while, onee-sama," Sachiko interjected ineffectually.

"That still doesn't explain why you haven't even had the simple decency to introduce her to me and the rest of your seniors," Youko demanded.

"As I said, it's complicated," the bouton sighed.

"Then uncomplicate it!" Youko bellowed. "I demand to meet this girl!"

"Is 'uncomplicate' even a word," Eriko asked with a giggle.

"Just go with the flow," Sei grinned. "She's on a roll."

"Please, everyone, calm down," Rei tried to interject but was completely ignored by the interested parties.

"I…" Sachiko started to try to explain, but couldn't for the life of her even think of where to begin.

"You haven't even told me her name!"

"It's Yumi! Fukuzawa Yumi!" Sachiko shrieked and only after she'd allowed the name to pass her lips did she realize what she'd done. Her eyes widened with a kind of fear she'd rarely felt. Fear for someone else.

"Oh, it just keeps getting better and better," Eriko howled with delight, nearly falling out of her chair. "Isn't that the name of the ghost you were telling us about, Sei?"

Sachiko gave Shimako a look of betrayal that had the "Angel of Lillian" shrugging her shoulders as if to say _what can I tell you? She's my onee-sama. She wheedled the information out of me._

"You can't mean to tell me that you've made a-a _ghost_ your petite soeur?!" Youko shrieked in full fury. "I won't have it!"

"You won't have it?" Sachiko yelled right back at her. "You won't have it?! Well too bad, onee-sama! Yumi's my petite soeur and she always will be! And nothing you can say will change that!"

"We'll just see about that," Youko fumed. "I refuse to have a _dead_ grandchild that I can't even see!"

"SHE'S NOT DEAD!" Sachiko actually screamed at that comment. How could anyone believe that Yumi was dead when she was just so alive?!

"I refuse to get into this argument with you, Sachiko!" Youko said in a steely voice. "Dead or alive, I still cannot see her…and a petite soeur I cannot see, or who cannot even greet me, is the same as no petite soeur at all! Period!"

Sachiko was fuming. She knew that her onee-sama could be single-minded at times, but she rarely if ever got as belligerent or as unyielding as she was being now. There was no way Youko-sama was going to give up her argument and, to be fair, Sachiko had to admit that she did have a point, although she seemed to be going out of her way to push just about every button that Sachiko owned.

"Onee-sama, you're being mean! All the onee-sama's are being mean," she declared as she stamped her foot and glared at the three seniors before turning to stare straight into Youko's eyes, "but fine! If you're going to be so infuriatingly obstinate…

"Yumi?" Sachiko called out, turning to the empty chair to her right, her voice softening even as the outline of her petite soeur began to manifest. It appeared that Yumi had already realized that she'd have to do something about this situation.

All sound in the room ceased as the specter of a young girl with brown hair styled in pigtails and brown eyes slowly came into being. As soon as she could, Sachiko grabbed hold of Yumi's hand and began trying to will her own strength into the girl.

"Oh my," Youko whispered softly as she brought her fingers to her lips.

"Hey, Sachan got herself a cute one," Sei grinned wickedly.

Eriko-sama simply beamed and clapped her hands in joy.

Rei and Yoshino were frozen, their eyes as wide as dinner plates.

Only Shimako had a smile on her face as her eyes sparkled with merriment.

"Onee-sama," Sachiko turned triumphantly to her dumbstruck grande soeur, "sisters, may I present to you my petite soeur, Fukuzawa Yumi."

You could have heard a pin drop in the room. Even Yoshino was speechless.

"Well I'll be damned," Sei chuckled softly.

"They were telling the truth," Eriko grinned maniacally. It was surely the most interesting thing to happen to her in years!

Youko still appeared to be stunned as Sachiko continued to smile and hold on to Yumi's hand.

"Yumi, will you please introduce yourself to the Roses?" she asked in a soft and loving voice.

"If-if it pleases you," Yumi stammered only slightly, her eyes focused on the slender fingers holding tightly to her hand, "I-I am Fukuzawa Yumi," she introduced herself and bowed her head. With Sachiko still holding her hand it appeared as if the others could hear her. "First-year Peach class number thirty-five…um, from 1964."

Pandemonium exploded within the room as everyone tried to speak the same time. Yumi's blush ran from her neck to the tips of her ears at all the attention, but before she could even contemplate answering the myriad questions being thrown at her a good looking young man with dark hair walked in _through_ the biscuit door startling everyone once again to silence.

"It's time, Yumi-chan," Hiroshi told her in a no-nonsense, commanding voice. "I finally got orders from the higher ups. It's time for you to go."


	10. Chapter 9

At Hiroshi's bald statement, Yumi's face went from flushed to white as a sheet while Sachiko simply stared, mouth agape at the young man for the space of two seconds before she put her arms around Yumi and held tightly to her. She'd never met this boy before, but from his looks and his statement she assumed that he was the shinigami Yumi had spoken of. The one that was always asking her if she was "ready" to go. Yet now, when Sachiko had finally found her petite soeur, when she'd finally found someone that she could love, he intended to take her away?

"Over my dead body will you be taking Yumi anywhere, you bastard!" she seethed, more venom in her voice than anyone had ever heard before.

"Hmm, Ogasawara Sachiko," Hiroshi tapped his chin and seemed to consider, completely unfazed by her vehemence, "nope, I don't have an order for you," he turned to stare at her with an evil smile, "yet," he snickered. "However," he took two steps closer to the pair and simply reached out a hand, "there's no way you can stop me."

Hiroshi's hand slipped through Sachiko's body, causing the taller girl to shudder in revulsion, and he used that shudder to grab hold of Yumi's shoulder. At the touch of his hand her body instantly went translucent, allowing him to pull her straight through Sachiko's grasp with ease.

"Rei! Help me!" Sachiko screamed out to her best friend as she tried to grab hold of Yumi's hand.

In one fluid move, the short-haired blonde grabbed her shinai from next to her book bag and swung. A blow which would have knocked out any normal man passed straight through Hiroshi's head without causing any damage. The shinigami didn't even flinch.

"Rei!" Eriko called out a warning as Yoshino slipped to the floor clutching her chest. Rei's anguished look as she was torn between helping her best friend or going to the aid of her loved one gave Sachiko heart even as the tall blonde rushed to Yoshino's side.

As much as she cared for her best friend's cousin, Sachiko knew that Rei couldn't do anything against this demon and didn't slight her in the least for her choice. Using her own will to the fullest, she reached out and grabbed on to Yumi's wrist. Feeling resistance, she tightened her grasp and pulled with all her might. She succeeded in at least bringing the shinigami's slow escape to a halt.

"I won't let you have her!" she screamed again, giving another tug just as Yumi tried to escape his grasp.

"What is she to you, Ogasawara Sachiko?" the young man sneered. "Why do you fight so hard for her? She's just a ghost; a phantom. She doesn't belong here in this place or in this time. She's a victim, and the powers that be have decided to end her misery. Why would you keep her from going to a better place or starting all over again with a new, better life? Why do you hold onto her so hard?"

"BECAUSE I LOVE HER!" Sachiko bellowed so loudly she was sure that they could hear her in the heavens.

"Because I love her," she said again in a much softer yet still unrestrained voice as she stared into Yumi's frightened brown eyes, tears streaming down both their cheeks. "She is much more than just my petite soeur. Yumi is the other half of my soul. If you take her away from me," she wept openly, "then you may as well take me also, because otherwise you condemn me to a life worse than death."

Still staring into Yumi's eyes, she continued to bare her soul. "I love you, Yumi. So few things in this life are certain, but this I know. I love you and I always will. I want you by my side until the day I die and then even beyond death. I want you with me always, forever more."

"And I love you, Sachiko," Yumi wept, her tears a mixture of joy and sorrow. "I always have, ever since the first day I saw you. You are, and ever will be, the only one for me."

"How ironically touching," Hiroshi sighed, "but it doesn't change my mission. I have no choice in my assignments as you well know. So, go ahead Yumi-chan. Give your love a goodbye kiss and maybe, if you're both lucky and loved by the gods, you'll see each other again. Maybe not in this life, but possibly the next."

Without relinquishing his hold on Yumi's shoulder he allowed the two a last, precious moment together.

"I promise, I'll come back to you somehow," Yumi murmured as she buried her face in Sachiko's breast. "I swear it."

"And I'll be waiting, my love," Sachiko replied as her tears decorated Yumi's hair like sparkling gems. "Forever and ever, until I see you again."

They hugged each other tightly. Then Yumi lifted her face and Sachiko found herself once again drowning in a sea of brown, this time swimming in tears. She leaned over slightly and pink lips met rose for possibly the last time in a sweet but searing kiss.

With an audible pop, both Yumi and Hiroshi disappeared.

-oo-

Sachiko was inconsolable.

It had taken Rei's considerable strength to carry the despondent girl all the way from the Rose Mansion to the front gate and her waiting limo after she'd collapsed to the meeting room floor after Yumi's disappearance. The members of the Yamayurikai had done their best, but no words could alleviate the excruciating pain of her shattered heart. Sachiko had missed school on Friday as she lay curled in her bed, numb for her loss and not even bothering to eat despite her parents' obvious concerns.

Her mother had called on Youko to come over after classes on Saturday to see if her grande soeur could do something to raise her spirits, but Sachiko wouldn't even turn to face her. She would acknowledge no one, her glazed eyes showed no sign of recognition or reason and her breathing was barely perceptible. Youko's words could make no dent in the impenetrable shield of grief Sachiko had built around herself.

On Monday she arrived back at school, forced to go by her parents despite her near catatonic state, and made her way slowly to the Rose Mansion with no intention of even attempting to go to any of her classes. The other students stopped and stared at her as she trod along. Her hair was a mess, her eyes bloodshot and puffy from all her crying and looking as dead as her spirit. Even her uniform was completely haphazard. Her mind, what there was of it, didn't register their shock at her appearance, unaware of anything save putting one foot in front of the other as she made her way to her destination. All she wanted was a quiet place where she could be alone in her grief, even if that place was the one place in the world where she would be constantly reminded of the girl she had loved and lost.

As soon as she walked in the door of the old house she could feel the difference. It seemed empty, lonelier, and less welcoming than it had been just the previous week. It was as if not only Yumi's spirit, but the spirit of the mansion itself was missing.

"No," Sachiko mused as she shook her head, closing the door softly behind her, "not missing, but in mourning. Even this old house is mourning her loss with me."

The feeling of being watched was also gone. She knew that this time, if she slipped on the stairs, there would be no one there to catch her. Even still she wasn't any more careful as she climbed the timeworn steps. If she broke her neck she might be able to see her love, but Yumi wouldn't welcome her if she did that. She knew the pigtailed girl would be angry with her for not taking care.

She stopped at the middle landing and ran a finger over the outline of the red rose in the stained glass window.

"If she'd stayed and become my petite soeur in truth she'd have eventually become Rosa Chinensis…if we'd been able to break her curse," she whispered softly as the first tear of the morning traced a slow curve down her cheek. "Maybe Maria-sama had other plans for her. Maybe my desires were too selfish."

Sachiko opened the biscuit door to the meeting room and set her book bag on the floor to the side. Moving to the small kitchenette she set about rinsing the electric kettle and preparing tea. It felt a little comforting to go through the old routine and before she knew it she was seated at the table with a steaming cup before her.

"What now?" she asked herself, her voice only barely breaking the silence of the large room. Pushing the cup to the side she laid her head down on the table using her arms as a pillow, her face turned toward the empty chair to her right.

"Are you happy where you are, Yumi?" she asked. "Did you go to heaven, or were you reborn? Are you waiting for me somewhere or have you forgotten all about me?"

Her tears further darkened the sleeve of her uniform as she gave in to her despair.

Youko entered the room at lunchtime to find her petite soeur fitfully sleeping with her head on the table and mumbling Yumi's name in her sleep.

"Sachiko," she called out softly, gently bringing her petite soeur to consciousness.

"O-onee-sama?" Sachiko mumbled as she tried to wake up from a bad dream she'd been having.

"Have you been here all day, Sachiko?"

"Hmm," she replied while knuckling her eyes, "at least since before first bell. I didn't feel like going to classes."

"I understand," Youko smiled sadly and took a seat next to her petite soeur, taking one hand between her own, "I really do, but you can't simply stop living just because Yumi-chan is gone."

"I know, onee-sama," Sachiko sighed, laying her head back down but this time such that she faced her grande soeur, "but I need time. I can't just pick up and pretend like she never entered my life. I…I loved her and," the raven haired girl started whimpering, "and now I'll never see her again."

To Sachiko it seemed as if Youko wanted to say something, but then decided against it as she brought Sachiko's hand to her lips and kissed it softly. "I'm sure things will get better," her onee-sama offered somewhat lamely. Still, Sachiko appreciated the sentiments if not the actual words.

Rei and Yoshino-chan entered the room next and were quick to offer their condolences and support to their friend. While Yoshino went to fix more tea, Eriko and Sei arrived. Eriko simply laid a soft hand on Sachiko's head in passing while Sei didn't even go that far, heading around the other side of the table toward her chair.

"Is Shimako-chan coming today?" Youko asked the Rosa Gigantea, a frown on her face.

"Yeah, she'll be along, but the teacher wanted her to do something first," Sei replied with a grin and a shrug - as if saying _what can you do? Everyone wants my petite soeur_ - before taking her seat.

Sachiko kept her head on the table and let the soft sounds of normal conversations wash over her. She knew that if she was ever going to get over this heartbreak it was going to be with the help of everyone in this room.

She turned her head again at the sound of the biscuit door opening and watched as Shimako-san entered with her usual smile.

"Everyone," she called out softly but loudly enough to gain everyone's attention, "I hope you don't mind my being late, but the teacher asked me to…"

That's as far as she got before she was brushed to the side as a whirlwind blew through the door and made a beeline for Sachiko. Before she knew what was happening she'd been knocked from her chair to land hard on the floor.

"Oh! That's gonna leave a bruise," Sei laughed out loud.

Sachiko was going to moan for the sudden pain in her tail bone, but before she could even take a breath, soft lips pressed hard against Sachiko's own in a fierce kiss.

"Y-YUMI!" Sachiko cried out when her lips were released as she threw her arms around the petite girl lying on top of her and pulled her into a tight hug.

"And here I had this whole nice introduction planned," Shimako pouted.

"You can't really blame her, can you?" Youko chuckled.

For Sachiko it was all background noise as she lay dumbstruck at the impossibility manifested above her.

"Is it…is it really you, Yumi?" she asked, staring with disbelief at the young, pigtailed girl above her. "Please, please tell me I'm not dreaming again."

"It's me, Sachiko-sama," Yumi told her with a great big smile, her brown eyes sparkling with delight. "It's really me. You're not dreaming."

"Oh, Yumi!" Releasing her hands from the smaller girl's waist, she cradled bright pink cheeks between her palms and pulled a cute little face down so that she could once again taste the soft lips she'd thought forever beyond her reach. "I don't know how," Sachiko gasped between kisses, "but it's really you. Oh, Yumi, I missed you so much! I thought you were dead! I thought you were gone for good! That I'd lost you forever! How are you here? How…how…?"

"It was you, Sachiko-sama," Yumi smiled at her, reaching a hand to tenderly touch her cheek. "It was all you. It was your kiss and saying that you loved me that finally broke the curse. I didn't understand her entirely at the time, but the curse was that I'd live unseen, unheard, and unloved - as if a ghost - until the time someone could not only see me and hear me, but truly love me exactly as I was."

"So it really was true love's kiss," Eriko shook her head in wonder. "Who would ever have guessed?"

"Who'd have ever thought that Sei-sama could come up with a plan that actually worked?!" Yoshino laughed.

"Or that you'd be such a good actress, Yoshino-chan," Sei grinned. "You even had Rei fooled."

"Well, if you'd have told me about it in the first place," Rei frowned.

"You know there's no way you can keep a secret, Rei-chan," Yoshino smirked. "You'd have given the game away."

"I admit, I never expected you to try to hit Hiroshi-kun with your shinai, though," Eriko laughed.

"Thank goodness he's a shinigami. I don't want to think what would have happened if he were human," Shimako sighed.

"You do swing a mean shinai, Hasekura-san," the shinigami in question said as he once again walked _through_ the biscuit door.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?" Eriko chided the youthful appearing spirit.

"I find that if you knock first, everyone stops talking about you and you never get to learn what they really think," the boy said with a raffish grin and a sly wink at Shimako. "I never knew you cared, Todou-san."

"In your dreams, death-boy," Shimako laughed.

As everyone talked around them, Sachiko and Yumi continued to lay on the floor oblivious to it all.

"What happened, Yumi? Why did you disappear like that?" Sachiko asked while continuing to cradle Yumi's cheek in her palm.

"When the curse broke I suddenly found myself just exactly where I'd been when the whole thing started – standing at the bus stop outside of Hanadera's main gates," the young girl explained. "I was disoriented needless to say, but a nice young man by the name of Alice helped me to a bench and then stayed with me until Hiroshi-kun found me again." Her eyes looked down and Sachiko could easily see the guilt on her face. "As much as I wanted to just run back here to you, I knew that there was someone else that I needed to see even more."

"Yuuki-dono," the raven haired girl nodded in agreement. "I understand, Yumi. Of course you had to see your brother first. He's been so worried about you for so many years."

"Except that I nearly gave him a heart attack when he opened the door to his apartment and saw me standing there looking not a day older than the day I disappeared," Yumi smiled sadly for a moment before her smile became warmer at that memory. "But he took me into his arms and hugged me so tight…we cried for so long, just happy to be back together again."

"I'm sorry about your parents," Sachiko offered, but Yumi just shook her head and then pressed her cheek into the older girl's hand, seeming to find comfort just from her touch.

"I already knew," she replied wistfully. "It had been so long that I knew they'd already passed on, but at least I still have my loving brother. We're going to live together again. He's set up a futon in his home office for me temporarily until we can find a bigger place." Her smile then grew even wider and her eyes took on a sparkle of merriment. "He made some phone calls to some people he's dealt with over the years. I guess even Yakuza need architects every now and then. I'm now legally his long lost niece from a previously unknown illegitimate aunt on my mother's side of the family," she laughed softly at the thought.

"But I needed official papers in order to be enrolled here at Lillian again," Yumi grinned. "I'm pretty sure I'm the oldest first-year high school student in the history of the school," she laughed, but then quickly became somber again. "It wasn't until I met Shimako-san in homeroom that I learned how hard you'd taken my disappearance," the pigtailed girl said as she leaned down and kissed Sachiko again. "I'm so sorry, Sachiko-sama. If I'd known…"

"No, Yumi," Sachiko smiled up at her, taking the opportunity to steal another kiss for herself. "Yuuki-dono needed you even more. Don't ever think otherwise. I'm just glad to have you back with me again." Those words, along with another stolen kiss seemed to bring Yumi out of her funk and put at least a small smile on her lips. "But there's something that we need to correct right now," the blue-eyed girl grinned.

Extricating themselves from the floor finally, Sachiko helped Yumi to stand up and then continued to hold her hand while she got everyone's attention.

"Onee-sama," she said while looking directly into Youko's eyes, "I told you last week that I'd never have any other petite soeur than Yumi and that I'd been holding onto my rosary for certain reasons." Youko smiled at that comment, now obviously fully aware of exactly what those reasons had been. Sachiko then turned to look at a wide-eyed but beaming Yumi. "And while I already consider her to be my petite soeur, now I can officially, and happily, finish what I'd previously started.

"Yumi?" she asked the shorter girl as she reached into the neckline of her uniform and withdrew her rosary so that she could hold it out to the smaller girl, "will you, once again, do me the honor of becoming my petite soeur?"

"Gladly…onee-sama," Yumi grinned ear-to ear as she dipped her head so that Sachiko could place the rosary around her neck.

"And," Sachiko went on, this time in a much softer and emotion-filled voice, "will you promise to stay by my side…now and forever more…until we both go with Hiroshi-kun to wherever it is that he takes us?"

"Until then and ever after," Yumi replied in a soft voice. The two were lost in each others' eyes, the rest of the room now forgotten. "Even if we are re-born, I will find you again so that we can be together until the end of time. I love you, Sachiko."

"And I love you, Yumi."

-oo-

Hiroshi smiled and allowed his seeming to slowly fade away. The remaining members of the Yamayurikai gathered around their friend and their newest member, offering words of welcome and congratulations. The smile on Yumi-san's face was everything he'd thought it would be and more. While he understood the importance of his job, and it did give him a real sense of satisfaction to help people move on to the next stage of their next lives, the fierce warmth that blazed in his heart at seeing that smile made everything else pale in comparison.

It may have been more than forty-five years in the making, but at this moment he couldn't help but think that Yumi was probably happier than she'd ever been before.

As if reading his mind, Yumi turned toward him and, even though he was invisible to everyone, she seemed to look straight in his eyes.

_Thank you_, she mouthed, and then that bright smile, the one he'd never seen before, returned as she looked back to Sachiko and laid her head against the taller girl's breast.

"You're very welcome, Yumi-sama," he replied with a bow before turning to leave them to their merriment.

He wouldn't soon be forgetting the small girl with pigtails in her hair, nor did he intend to be gone all that long. He'd continue to watch over her, stopping by from time to time to make sure she continued in her happiness.

Now that he'd finally seen it, he wanted to see more of that wonderful, wonderful smile.

* * *

A/N: And that's a wrap ;-) I hope that you enjoyed the story. Please drop me a note or a review and let me know what you thought. Hopefully the whole "true love's kiss" wasn't too cliché and cheesy. I figure if it's good enough for Disney...

Thank you all again so much for reading. Until next time,

CX

A/N2: A special shout out to Tom for visiting with Ran and me over on FP. I'm glad you enjoyed the story ;-)


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